Actual caption:

Rosie O'Donnell, left, gets a high five from co-hosts Barbara Walters as O'Donnell joined the cast for the taping of the first show of the 10th season of the ABC talk show, 'The View' on Sept. 5, 2006 in New York. O'Donnell is in the midst of a war of words with Donald Trump. There are questions about how Walters feels about the latest uproar. Especially since this year's departure of Meredith Vieira led Walters to seek out O'Donnell. Walters was on vacation Thursday, Dec. 21, 2006, and unavailable for comment, a show spokesman said. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

Just caught this on one of my local "conspiracy" sites.

"FEMA's work has been continued by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which has again postponed its report on WTC-7, this time until 2007. NIST is now saying that it is also investigating the hypothesis that explosions initiated the collapse. Interviewed in the March 2006 issue of New York Magazine, Dr S. Shyam Sunder, NIST lead investigator, summed up the present state of the investigation:

NIST did have "some preliminary hypotheses" on 7 WTC, Dr. Sunder said. "We are studying the horizontal movement east to west, internal to the structure, on the fifth to seventh floors." Then Dr. Sunder paused. "But truthfully, I don't really know. We've had trouble getting a handle on Building No. 7."

An absolutely extraordinary discussion occurred on Thursday’s “Special Report” concerning the role of the media in wartime, and what the change in press coverage in the past sixty years has meant for the nation. Tastefully setting the table, host Brit Hume showed a clip of Clear Glass Productions' satirical film depicting how today’s liberal media would have covered World War II had this current iteration been around in the '40s (hysterical trailer of the film available here, video of Special Report segment here, hat tip to NB member Blonde):

ANNOUNCER: According to Pentagon sources, this now brings the official total of Americans killed overseas to 250,000. Congresswoman and House leader Ancy Lagosi took time out from her reelection campaign to mark the occasion.

REP ANCY LAGOSI: 250,000 of our finest coming home in wooden boxes, for what? To support a lie. What has Germany and Italy got to do with Pearl Harbor?

CROWD: Nothing!

LAGOSI: That's right, nothing.

CROWD: Roosevelt lied, millions died. Roosevelt lied, millions died.

Once the clip was over, Hume began:

I've been trying to find more information on it that doesn't start out 'wingnut trying to debunk death toll'.

Any credible sites disputing the figure?

Many people might not be familiar with Denver, Colorado’s most popular radio talk show host Mike Rosen. Regardless, he wrote an op-ed in Friday’s Rocky Mountain News which was an open letter to CBS president Sean McManus (hat tip to TVNewser, emphasis mine throughout):

Unfortunately, CBS News has been mired in last place behind NBC and ABC in recent years. Your response has been to hire Katie Couric to "perk up" your evening newscast. That was a mistake. Although she scored some good ratings numbers during her first week, this was likely a flash-in-the-pan reaction to a big promotional campaign and viewer curiosity. In the November sweeps, she's settled into a "distant third," as Variety recently phrased it.

Fascinated? Well, here was the marvelous payoff pitch:

Michelle Malkin notes that there are now five groups that have been "unable to confirm the existence of a Captain Jamil Hussein at Yarmouk." Besides her, the "other four are CPATT, the Iraqi Ministry of Interior (MOI), Marc Danzinger's team, and Eason Jordan's team."

Possible candidates for "Captain Jamil Hussein": Jamil Gholaiem Hussein, Jamil Ghdaab Gulaim, Jamil Ghdaab Ghulaim, or indeed Jamil Hussein, but not as a police captain, but instead as a Sergeant.

A little bit of "Hussein" here, a shade of "Gulaim" there... When you are never obligated to prove your claims, why not throw in a little "Gholaiem" as well?

It should be clear from all of this that AP writers are merely story painters, with palettes as large as the earth itself. A painting can be made, or a "trend" created, out of stringing together facts from any set of random people in the world. If you wanted to write a story claiming the 1920s-era flapper style is now all the rage, a shade of "teenager Sarah Wilson likes flapper clothes" here, a touch of "fashion watchers are observing..." there, and you've made a whole new painting out of shoddy-at-best sources, ones you'll likely never have to verify. In the process, you've just proven the existence of the biggest thing to hit the fashion world since blue jeans.

Michelle Malkin has the latest on efforts to identify the mysterious "Captain Jamil Hussein," the "source" the AP claimed as an authority figure for a number of reports out of Iraq, including the apocryphal November story that claimed "Shiite militiamen grabbed six Sunnis as they left Friday worship services, doused them with kerosene and burned them alive."

As Malkin reports, the AP itself isn't being very cooperative in trying to follow up on new leads.

Yesterday, I contacted the AP about the "Jamil Hussein"/Jamil Ghdaab Gulaim/Ghulaim findings and asked these simple questions:

Ref. http://michellemalkin.com/archives/006579.htm

1. Is Jamil Ghdaab Gulaim the real name of your oft-cited source, "Captain Jamil Hussein" aka " Jamil Gholaiem Hussein?"

• Greg Sheffield's blog
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The Boston Globe can't put two and two together on immigration. Just last week it wrung its editorial hands over the fact that illegal immigrants are taking jobs away from. But naturally it didn't make the logical connection and call for a crackdown on illegal immigration. Then today, the paper lends its pages to a union official who, when it comes to illegals, sees only employers, with nary an illegal immigrant to be found.

Annotated excerpts from Protect the rights of immigrants by Rocío Sáenz, shown here, president of a Service Employees International Union local in Boston:

• "The national political climate both exploits immigrant workers and punishes them for seeking the American dream."

Wrong. To the meager extent they're punished at all, it's for violating the laws of the United States.

• Mark Finkelstein's blog
• 17 comments
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As NewsBusters has reported here and here, there has been a shockingly deafening silence from the American media concerning revelations of former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger’s actions at the National Archives in 2003. In fact, it appears that only Fox News has much interest in a story about a top-level political official stealing and destroying top secret documents from the facility responsible for storing them.

With that in mind, “Your World” invited Ann Coulter on to discuss this issue on Thursday, and the conservative author was not shy (video available here courtesy of our friend at Ms Underestimated). After guest host David Asman gave some background, he asked his guest: “Ann Coulter, where is the outrage? Are you surprised that there is no outrage about this?”

Ann didn’t disappoint:

FL. 13 -Beyond Ridiculous... When Is Enough, 'Enough'???

SARASOTA, FL. (NS) -

Comment on whatever you like...

As 2006 draws to a close, the MRC has once again ranked the most egregiously biased quotes from members of the media. So, who made the cut as "the best of the worst?" Click here to find out.

Christmas may be arriving soon, but NPR chose the week before December 25 as the appropriate time to broadcast an atheist message of holiday intolerance. Showing that radio can still compete with television for extreme examples of bias, the taxpayer-supported NPR also wondered if ailing Senator Tim Johnson’s family "has the right" to ruin the Democratic majority.

The media’s flirtation with Senator Barack Obama doesn’t seem to have lessened their love affair with Hillary Clinton. "Today" show co-host Meredith Vieira told Mrs. Clinton that it’s now "more imperative that we need a village to raise healthy, secure children." The New York Senator also received a very warm welcome on "The View."

This week, Dan Rather appeared on CNN’s "Reliable Source" and claimed that Saddam Hussein was more honest than President Bush. Rather also reiterated his attacks on the Fox News Channel.

Chris Matthews's apparently inexorable plunge off the Olbermann end of the pool continued on Thursday's Hardball.

Matthews [seen in file photo] discussed the Scooter Libby trial with Newsweek investigative reporter Michael Isikoff and former associate independent counsel Scott Fredericksen. Matthews put it to Isikoff that the case against Libby is "open and shut," a conclusion that Isikoff declined to endorse.

Fredericksen stated that, to the contrary, there are many defenses available to Libby and that "you've got the Vice-President coming in to testify for him . . . you've got a darn good defense."

As Fredericksen continued to sketch a defense, Matthews interjected:

"Do you think Cheney is going to lie in court?"

The Center for Media and Public Affairs, the long-time shingle of academic media-bias expert Robert Lichter (have you ever read "The Media Elite"?), has a new study out on just how negative "The Daily Show" was in the week leading up to Election Day 2006. CMPA, also the former home of MRC research guru Rich Noyes, has long specialized in studying the political tilt of TV jokes as well as TV news. This study suggests that if negativity is a problem in our political culture, then Jon Stewart ain’t the solution:

Comedy Central’s highly-rated "Daily Show" program covered the 2006 mid-terms with a nearly unanimous negative tone, according to a new study released by the Center for Media and Public Affairs (CMPA). While the show bills itself as ‘fake news,’ their reporting prior to the election was 97% negative – far more unfavorable than network news coverage of the Mark Foley scandal, and even of Saddam Hussein – though equally harsh towards Republicans and Democrats.

Click here for instructions on running Gaggle daily on your own site. There's also an archive of previous toons available here.