Wouldn't you think that someone who fashions his show "Hardball" would have the intestinal fortitude to invite on at least one guest who disagrees with his world view? At least tonight, Chris Matthews apparently thought that unnecessary.

Here was Matthews guest line-up this evening:

• Philippe Sands: left-wing Brit, author of a new book, Lawless World, accusing Pres. Bush of having decided very early on in the game to go to war against Iraq.
• John Podesta: the lugubrious former chief-of-staff to Bill Clinton and member of Hillary's inner circle.  Podesta is the President of the Center for American Progress, founded by George Soros.
• Pat Buchanan: while the Today show had the chutzpah last week to bill him as a 'Republican strategist,' this 2000 presidential nominee of the Reform Party tonight acknowledged the undeniable - that he's "left the [Republican] party." His gloves were off on this evening's show, accusing his favorite targets, the "neo-cons," of ginning up the Iraq war.
• Susan Page: reporter for the Dem-friendly USA Today. Let's call the affable Page a voice of the more reasonable realms of the center-left media.
• Craig Crawford: the snarky MSNBC/CBS political analyst who enjoys taking snide shots at the Bush administration.
• Charlie Cook: political pollster, he of the Cook Political Report. Call Cook reasonably down-the-middle, but consider that the bouquets he placed in his own bio come from the NY Times, Bob Schieffer Al Hunt and David Broder. No one has ever accused Cook of being a Republican.

Sure, Matthews has had his share of Republican guests. But couldn't he have found at least one to round out tonight's left-leaning/Bush antagonist line-up?

ABC started off this week's focus on global warming by falsely presenting a liberal journalist and author as a Pulitzer Prize winner.

Former Boston Globe editor and reporter Ross Gelbspan was the centerpiece of Geoff Morrell's March 26 World News Tonight report. Morrell labeled Gelbspan a "Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist." But Gelbspan never won the award, which was given to seven reporters in 1984 for a social issue -- series on race relations in Boston -- not a scientific dispute like climate change.

Gelbspan's publisher and Climate Crisis Coalition, an environmental activist Web site he founded, both describe Gelbspan as a Pulitzer Prize winner, although his personal Web site words the matter more carefully.

The Senate began a debate on immigration reform today, and that seemed to be the focus on "The Early Show" on CBS this morning. Co-host Harry Smith interviewed New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson and Republican strategist Bay Buchanan. Smith chose to frame the debate as a "crackdown on undocumented workers" and ignored the fact that these "undocumented workers" are in fact in America illegally.

This morning’s program opened with a tease from Harry Smith:

Harry Smith: "A huge battle is brewing in Washington after a weekend of massive rallies over immigration. Hundreds of thousands protested a proposed crackdown on undocumented workers."

Smith then proceeded to open his interview segment in a similar fashion:

Starter topics: Mickey Kaus catches the L.A. Times deliberately editing out information about pro-illegal immigration protestors waving the Mexican flag at events. Apparently, liberal columnist Molly Ivins believes that only ex-reporters should be allowed to opine. "No one should be allowed to write opinion without spending years as a reporter," she writes.

WaPo's Howie Kurtz solves what he calls a "minor mystery" of who is behind FireDavidGregory.com. Turns out it was one of those nefarious NewsBusters, Ian Schwartz. Howie shouldn't take too much pride in his findings, though, since anyone could've discovered it doing a whois of the domain. Meanwhile, USA Today TV critic Peter Johnson tracks the speculation over whether Katie Couric will jump to CBS.

Non-media topics: Is marriage only for white people? And why are universities suddenly starting up courses in "porn studies?"

Moussaoui: White House was my 9/11 target
He accepts prosecution argument that attack could have been stopped
AP, 3/27/06

...The claim came after Moussaoui acknowledged he had lied to investigators when arrested in August 2001 because he wanted to let the attacks go forward.

“Yes, you can say that,” Moussaoui said when the prosecution asked if that was why he misled them. The statement was key to the government’s case that the attacks might have been averted if Moussaoui had been more cooperative following his arrest. ...

Justice Scalia has voiced his outrage at the idea of providing our enemy with both a jury and civil rights. "War is war". Who on the terrorist side would do the same for one of us if we were to be captured? How many Americans have been decapitated?

It’s a tale of two presidential campaigns on page A26 of Sunday’s New York Times. 

At the top of the page, Sheryl Gay Stolberg’s “Testing Presidential Waters As Race at Home Heats Up” follows Virginia Republican Sen. George Allen around the state in preparation to running for a second term -- and possibly for president in 2008.

The text box emphasizes Allen’s conservatism:

“A Republican faces the delicate task of tacking right without alienating his base.” Stolberg also references Allen’s “conservative voting record” and the fact that “Fiscal conservatives seem to like him, but social conservatives are uneasy.”

She also notes that 2006 “is looking up for Democrats” and that Allen’s “re-election bid just got tougher than he expected” when James Webb, a Navy secretary under Reagan, got into the Democratic primary.

It was only a small item carried on the headline banner of Fox News Channel March 25. The report told newsreaders that in Cheshire, Massachusetts, and unknown anti-war protesters had sprayed painted graffiti across a memorial honoring a soldier who died in the first days of the war in Iraq. This incident was not even worthy of a mention in any major media print publication or on other television outlets.

Any report showing the gross inappropriateness of the anti war movement is generally ignored by the mainstream press today. One would be required to search long and hard to find any coverage reflecting either a distortion of facts or distain for anti war actions. In reality, the traditional media outlets of this country are more than supportive, if not encouraging of the movement.

Will someone please pinch me & tell me IM not seeing what is going on in the streets in various cities across the country. For some reason thousand or illegal immigrants are protesting the Government for trying to pass a bill that would make it a crime to be in this country illegally. WOW, What a novel Idea! For Thirty years now illegals have been flooding across our borders & after 9/11 it has to stop & Now. This is not discrimination or some mean Republican or Democratic act to hurt immigrants , but a way to secure our borders so we will not have another attack upon this country & With this in mind IM all for it. Since the founding of this Country People from all over the world have come to this great nation for freedom & an opportunity to grow & Reach great heights of prosperity but there is one very distinct difference , They did it legally, & that's what made them welcome & accepted by the rest of the nation. Terry Nelson . Cleveland Ohio

Will someone please pinch me & tell me IM not seeing what is going on in the streets in various cities across the country. For some reason thousand or illegal immigrants are protesting the Government for trying to pass a bill that would make it a crime to be in this country illegally. WOW, What a novel Idea! For Thirty years now illegals have been flooding across our borders & after 9/11 it has to stop & Now. This is not discrimination or some mean Republican or Democratic act to hurt immigrants , but a way to secure our borders so we will not have another attack upon this country & With this in mind IM all for it. Since the founding of this Country People from all over the world have come to this great nation for freedom & an opportunity to grow & Reach great heights of prosperity but there is one very distinct difference , They did it legally, & that's what made them welcome & accepted by the rest of the nation. Fritz Hereid. Ohio Valley

Sean Hannity has made border security and illegal immigration a major cause, spending time at and broadcasting shows from our border with Mexico. Give GMA credit for having Sean on this morning's show to discuss the issue. That said, Charlie Gibson put on a display of bleeding-heart liberalism at its most predictable, confusing compassion with tolerance of criminality.

Gibson wasted no time: "Let's start with the House bill. It would build a wall along our southern border, turn 12 million people into felons and make it criminal to give an illegal immigrant help. Is that what this country is about?"

Countered Hannity: "I think this country is about laws and the rule of law and I think you've got to come into this country and do it the way my grandparents did it, which is legal."

Romenesko links to a letter written by Kim Alan Gigstead, a former Republican press secretary.

After Woodward and Bernstein's work on Watergate, too many reporters were "Woodstein wannabes," desperate for instant success by uncovering the next big scandal

Watergate's result

Re: "Newspapers then, and now," Tanya Barrientos' March 18 column:

Watergate may have been journalism's finest hour, but what it spawned is not. Journalism of the '80s and '90s was peppered with "Woodstein wannabes." The young, hard-charging reporter could become rich and famous by either working in the trenches for 40 years or toppling a politician or businessman via gotcha journalism. As a Republican press secretary in the 1980s, I fended off more questions about sleazy girlfriends, supposed kickbacks, and alleged drug use than anything about tax reform, foreign policy or national infrastructure.

Robert Klein Engler is an author and member of the Illinois Minuteman Project. After the massive protests in Chicago opposed to reforming immigration, WGN Chicago invited Engler on the air to talk about the issue and represent the group. But Engler says he was invited under false pretenses.

Engler wrote a report of his experience at the studio:

Many of those involved in the Illinois Minuteman Project believe the Chicago media is biased towards illegal immigrants. At best the media is ill informed and at worst it is simply the propaganda arm for the Democratic Party and the Clan of Bridgeport. Recently, I was invited to appear on WGN's TV-News program, Adelante, as a representative of The Illinois Minuteman Project to see if what we believe about the media is true. What happened was an eye-opener.

I was asked to represent the IMP by its director Rosana Pulido. She was told to send someone who would be on the program with a woman representing the Latino community to talk about U. S. House of Representative's Bill H. R. 4437. That bill would make being an illegal immigrant in the U. S. a felony crime. When I arrived at the TV station and was taken to the green room, I soon discovered what I had prepared for was not going to happen. The discussion I planned to attend turned into a setup.

America should prepare itself for a continuous onslaught of “Democrats Will Take Back Congress” articles in the next seven and a half months. TIME magazine published one on Sunday entitled “Republicans on the Run.” In it, the authors proudly proclaimed: “In recent weeks, a startling realization has begun to take hold: if the elections were held today, top strategists of both parties say privately, the Republicans would probably lose the 15 seats they need to keep control of the House of Representatives and could come within a seat or two of losing the Senate as well.”

Now, the word “privately” was emphasized by me to make a point that becomes quite clear in the article: TIME couldn’t find any top strategists from either party to make this claim publicly. Instead, what TIME did was issue a bold prediction while neglecting to provide the reader any statistical evidence as to the likelihood of it coming true.

Alas, if facts were actually important to the article’s authors rather than idle speculation, they could have either questioned top political strategist Charlie Cook, or referred to an article he coincidentally wrote on this very subject in Saturday’s National Journal: “Despite national political trends indicating that the GOP is in serious trouble, a race-by-race ‘micro’ analysis suggests that Democrats cannot easily seize control of the House or the Senate this fall.”

Unlike TIME, Cook, who is considered to be non-partisan, actually used arithmetic and simple logic to analyze the current political landscape. How refreshing:

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