Actual caption:

NBC reporter Katie Couric (L) interviews actor Michael Richards on the set of 'Seinfeld,' March 25, 1998. Richards will personally apologize to three black men and a black woman he offended in a torrent of racial slurs unleashed during a recent nightclub performance, his spokesman said on Friday. REUTERS/Handout

How do you know when you've gone overboard with political correctness? When even the liberal panelists of Fox News Watch chide you for it. Host Eric Burns normally stays above the fray. But for some reason, on this evening's show he chose to criticize US Airways for removing from one of its flights six imams whose actions had made other passengers uneasy.

Said Burns, introducing the segment: "There were two stories in the news this week about religion. First, Pope Benedict in Turkey tried to encourage tolerance between Catholics and Muslims. Second, a story of tolerance of U.S. Airways and Muslims - there wasn't any - as six Muslim religious leaders, or imams, were recently yanked off a US Airways flight for no apparent reason other than that a passenger thought they were behaving strangely. Jane, I wonder if the moral of these two stories is first that the media are not at all captivated by this Pope . . but they are captivated by stories that seem to show that anti-terrorist policies sometimes go too far."

It would be political malpractice for Democrats to hand the microphone for their weekly radio address to someone whose remarks didn't advance the interests of their party.  And sure enough, the transcript of left-wing preacher Jim Wallis's talk of today reveals nothing that wouldn't comfortably fit in the mouth of Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi. 

Wallis might coyly call himself "non-partisan," but does that oblige the CNN-AP to follow suit?  Yet in its story on Wallis's address, AP-CNN referred to Wallis as "non-partisan" and tried to bolster that view of him by adding that "the religious leader has been openly critical of Democratic politicians."  Perhaps as a matter of the Dems' overly-partisan form.  But as a matter of  substance, Wallis's views are indistinguishable from those of the liberal mainstream of the Democratic party.

Jennings Enlists Extremists in Desperate Attempt to Overturn Lawful Election...

Saturday, December 02, 2006...

 
 
SARASOTA, FL (NS/BuchananForCongress) –

The Buchanan campaign released the following statement today regarding the radical “revote rally” to be held Sunday in Sarasota... 

“With her lawsuit against the people now in shambles, Christine Jennings has enlisted the most extreme elements of the Democrat party in her desperate attempt overturn Congressman-elect Vern Buchanan’s lawful election,” said spokeswoman Sally Tibbetts.  “In a veiled effort to advance their partisan agenda, liberal special interest groups are busing in hundreds of outsiders to invade Sarasota and deny the will of the people of this district by calling for a new election.” 

Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony certainly deserves his rightful share of criticism and rebuke for his handling of the church abuse scandal. However, a front-page headline in today's Los Angeles Times (Saturday, December 2, 2006) delivers an unfair and misleading impression over supposed "inaction" by the Cardinal.

Yesterday the Los Angeles Archdiocese announced it will pay a $60 million settlement to 45 people who say they were abused by Catholic priests. Today's Times reported the news with five articles, five photos, and 5078 words. (Two articles are on the front page: one is the major headline at the top of the page, and another is at the fold. The five articles I've counted also include a 'Q&A' piece and a Church-bashing commentary by staffer Steve Lopez.)

USAgNet | December 1, 2006

President Bush has signed the 'Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act,' which expands criminal prohibitions against the use of force, violence, and threats involving animal enterprises and increases penalties for violations of these prohibitions.

As defined by the bill, 'animal enterprises' include commercial and academic enterprises that use or sell animals or animal products for profit, food, agriculture, education, research and testing. This definition also includes equine activities such as rodeo, horse shows and similar lawful equine events.

Sponsored by Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) and Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), this bill amends the Animal Enterprise Act of 1992. The American Horse Council was a major supporter of that legislation and worked hard with other industry groups to make sure that the final legislation protected horse events.

A federal judge in Los Angeles, who previously struck down sections of the Patriot Act, has ruled that provisions of an anti-terrorism order issued by President George W. Bush after September 11 are unconstitutional.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/28/AR2006112801408_pf.html

PORTLAND, Oregon (CNN) -- The U.S. Justice Department said Wednesday it is paying $2 million and apologizing to an Oregon lawyer wrongly accused of being involved with the 2004 train bombings in Madrid, Spain.

http://edition.cnn.com/2006/LAW/11/29/mayfield.suit/index.html

The Iraq government has set up an agency to monitor false news coming out of Iraq. After the Associated Press used a government source that doesn't exist, the government wants to make sure the AP and other media outlets cannot get away with similar fraudulent activity. Reports the UK Guardian.

Iraq's interior ministry has formed a press monitoring unit in response to what it described as "fabricated and false news" that misrepresents the country's security situation.

Singling out the Associated Press for criticism, spokesman Brigadier General Abdul-Karim Khalaf said yesterday that dedicated unit would monitor news coverage and even initiate legal action if journalists do not correct stories it believes to be incorrect.

On Thursday's World News with Charles Gibson, ABC correspondent Erin Hayes showcased military wives who voiced support for America's continued presence in Iraq and are worried that a troop withdrawal will come too soon. Hayes noted, "Some might assume that bringing all the troops home quickly and for good would be a great relief to those families. But that is not how many of them see it." Referring to the "war's eye view that convinced them there has been progress," Hayes played several sound bites of these wives making such assertions as "we do need to stay until it's done" and "I don't think that it would be in our best interest to just pull out right now." (Transcript follows)

On Friday's Countdown, MSNBC host Keith Olbermann attacked FNC's Bill O'Reilly, calling him a "holy you-know-what liar" because O'Reilly recently bragged that he had voiced the need for tough martial law early on to keep order in Iraq. During recent comments on The Radio Factor, O'Reilly misstated the date of his prediction as "the night that Saddam's statue fell" when, in fact, it was a mere two nights later (April 11, 2003, instead of April 9), still in the recent aftermath. Olbermann, likely inspired by an article from one of his regular sources in the form of the far-left Media Matters for America, seized on the date mixup to accuse O'Reilly, whom he referred to gratuitously as "Billow" and "Bill Orally," of being a "liar," and tagged the FNC host "Worst Person in the World." (Transcripts follow)

What really happened on Flight 300 in Minneapolis surely isn't what what the media originally reported (examples: Associated Press, Bloomberg). Richard Miniter's Pajamas Media's report, other blog reports, and the Washington Times get us as close as we'll probably ever get to the full truth.

__________________________________

OVERVIEW: As we have seen during the past two weeks in the reporting of incidents out of Iraq (the "Ramadi non-Airstrike" covered by Patterico, and the "Burning Six" assembled by Michelle Malkin), that the press will not wait to release a report that fits one of their templates ("Soldiers kill civilians," "Iraq is an incurable mess," "There is heavy bias against Islam," etc.) if the limited facts at hand seem to support that template. By the time the full set of facts catches up, millions of readers and viewers have been misled (and, of course, influenced); corrections, if any, are limited; and the press has moved on to their next story. "Drive-by Media" indeed.
__________________________________

Richard Miniter (yes, the same guy who shredded the "no WMDs in Iraq" claim over a year ago) has a full report at Pajamas Media (HT Michelle Malkin), supported by the full text of an e-mail from "Pauline" and a copy of police report on the incident.

As a convenience to readers, I have converted Miniter's PDF of Pauline's e-mail to HTML, and it is here. It did not convert perfectly, but no text was lost; I strongly recommend a full read, as it makes additional points not raised in this post. The 3.8 mb police report PDF file is not readily convertible.

Here's a portion of what Miniter wrote, (but DO read the whole thing):

The 2006 hurricane season was an amazing flop – only nine storms instead of the predicted 17 and none of the hurricanes even made landfall in the United States.

But you’d never know it reading The Washington Post’s Style story “A Dream Blown Away.” According to writer Joel Garreau, we should “Call 2006 the Batten Down the Hatches Moment.”

Why? Because insurance companies are now being more particular about insuring properties on the coasts and are insuring against (that is what they do) the possible dangers of climate change.

Add the Kennedy Center in Washington as another area that Katie Couric will have a conflict of interest problem if there's a story there. They've made a musical out of her children's book "The Brand New Kid," a tale of tolerance inspired by the school shootings like Columbine that came out in 2000. The Washington Times adds Valerie Plame was a big fan:

Katie Couric's The Brand New Kid" made its world premiere at the Kennedy Center during the weekend, and while the "CBS Evening News" anchorwoman says she was unable to make the opening performance, Valerie Plame of CIA-leak fame was in the audience and sends her rave reviews.

Maureen Dowd plays the false indignation card in her pay-per-view column of today, What’s in a Name, Barry?

The gist: those mean Republicans are trying to tar the rising star of the Democratic party [legally-mandated descriptor] by making malign associations with his moniker. The GOP's latest mischief - letting people know that the middle name of the junior senator from Illinois is "Hussein."

Bunk.  Any possible shock value in the Barack Hussein Obama handle has already largely faded.  And this being a nation that likes to see itself as open and accepting, I'd say that, should he stay in the race, by election time his name will be an absolute advantage.  Predicted opening line at the 2008 DNC Convention - if it comes to that - "I am an American. And my name is Barack Hussein Obama." Cue the wild cheering on the floor as Katie Couric gets all misty up in the booth.

A November 30, 2006, article by Los Angeles Times staff writer Seema Mehta is entitled, "Evangelical pastor, Obama join forces to battle AIDS." In an unflattering passage on evangelicals, Mehta forwards the claim, "They [evangelical Christians] remain one of the religious groups slowest to respond to the pandemic [AIDS]."

Mehta's claim simply isn't true. What is one way that we know this? Mehta's own newspaper editors directly debunk her on the very same day as her article!

The Times' editorial debunking Mehta is "Christian conservatives vs. AIDS." Writes the Times (all emphasis mine),