Here's what I believe to be true regarding some of the most important issues facing America today, and what most politicians apparently don't.

IMMIGRATION LAW ENFORCEMENT

I'm going to be as blunt as I can be with respect to the illegal alien problem in this country, while refraining from using the profane terms that routinely leap to my mind every time I think about our government's unrelenting failure to address this issue in any responsible way. To get right to the point, any person in this country who doesn't support (A) doing whatever is necessary to stop illegals from entering this country, (B) severely punishing individuals and businesses that knowingly hire illegals, and (C) immediately deporting anyone who is found to be in this country illegally, is either an illegal alien himself, an opportunistic politician, or an idiot.

On Comedy Central's South Park cartoon Wednesday, the world's environment is threatened by the impossible smugness of those driving hybrid cars. (The smug clouds are biggest over San Francisco, naturally.) The danger passes only when the people of South Park mash their hybrid cars into little aluminum cubes. And, just for fun, the animators named their hybrid the "Pious," a knock on Toyota's "Prius."

Funny enough, but the very next morning on NBC's Today, reporter Tom Costello was lauding the wonders of efficient, low emission hybrid cars (as opposed to those awful SUVs) when he showcased a smug driver who sounded like a South Park gag. MRC's Geoff Dickens caught this part of NBC's report:

Tom Costello: "Betsy Rosenberg didn't always drive a hybrid car but after getting fed up with 15 mpg in her SUVs she traded them both in for a Toyota Prius and 50 mpg."

Betsy Rosenberg: "I decided this was something that I would do to protect my kid, my country, my planet and be patriotic. I think that's the patriotic thing to do is to use less gas and not more."

Because of my job, I often visit the MediaTakeOut.com website.  It's a gossip site, and generally, I wouldn't pay their shenanigans any mind.  But today is different.  They took the initial story about McKinney's scuffle with Capitol Police and appropriately slugged it with a generic remark about a possible arrest.  That's much different than what's on the site now.  While the previous incarnation of the site referred to itself as having "all the latest gossip,"  just 24-hours later, the new version of the site has dubbed itself as featuring "All The Latest African-American News" -- and the McKinney story has gotten a makeover of its own.  The new headline?  "Officer Attacks Black Congresswoman."

Let's not forget that this is the fifth run-in McKinney has had with Capitol Police.   And when they tried to solve the problem by posting a picture of her at the security station so she would be recognized, she wasn't happy then either. Let's also not ignore the fact that neither the officer involved nor the Congresswoman are pressing charges.  This was a simple misunderstanding -- she wasn't wearing the lapel pin that would have allowed her to pass without having to go through the metal detector.  The officer involved called for her to stop a number of times, she ignored him and he took her arm to stop her.  She says she didn't hear him. Would she and those choosing to make this a racial incident have preferred that she was tackled? 

When Hillary Clinton charged that the House Republican immigration bill would "criminalize...Jesus himself," there was national-media notice – if not criticism. Even Hillary’s "hometown" newspaper The New York Times reported on March 23 that Senator Clinton intensified her criticism of Republican immigration proposals, albeit on page B-5. But no one in the story criticized Hillary for her harsh attack. Instead, reporter Nina Bernstein noted only critics to Hillary’s left: "Mrs. Clinton had been criticized by some immigrant activists for saying little about the issue until March 8, and then speaking at an Irish-only rally, rather than at a forum more representative of immigrants. But yesterday all seemed forgiven." Bernstein’s story, headlined, "Mrs. Clinton Says GOP Immigration Plan Is At Odds With The Bible," began:

Kidnapped journalist Jill Carroll is now safe, thank God for that. But the mainstream media is playing this story completely different than they would if it were a non-journalist.

Remember when the New York Times violated our safety by printing classified information, all because it is the right of the people to know everything? Remember how every MSM talking head and editorial criticized the White House for being secretive? Do you recall the MSM ranting that nothing is so important that it should be kept from the public?

Read this quote from Editor and Publisher: "

But new speculation arose today that money might have been the initial demand... Cook would not comment, and other reporters in Baghdad said only that such speculation had been growing. "There are indications that [the demand] was for money, but we don't know if any changed hands," said Steve Butler, Knight Ridder foreign editor who had been in touch with his reporters in Baghdad today. He said learning too much about what occurred behind the scenes could be harmful. "These things are sometimes better left unresolved," he added. "It could harm the next one or close off options in the future if too much is known."

So in this case MSM thinks it is best that the public not know anything about the actions behind this story, because they might be able to do the same thing again in the future, whatever it is that this was. Perfect. By the way, that doesn't count for US secrets that might save the lives of US soldiers or average citizens.

It reminds me that here we are two months after Bob Woodruff was blown up while the cameras were rolling, and we still haven't seen the footage. I've seen lots of US soldiers being blown up, I've seen other victims barely clothed, barely alive, tubes out of their arms and faces in the most visually vulnerable way, but no Bob Woodruff. I bet there hasn't been hundreds of TV remote trucks parked on the front lawn of Woodruff's house either, waiting for the family to take the garbage out and give a soundbite.

It must be nice to be a journalist with all the special rights afforded to them that the rest of us somehow don't deserve.

The LA Times reports the "folks at third-place MSNBC have something to smile about."

For the first time in almost five years, the third-place cable news channel had a prime-time victory to crow about, albeit a small one: "Countdown With Keith Olbermann" beat CNN's "Paula Zahn Now" in the key 25- to 54-year-old advertising demographic in the first quarter of 2006, according to Nielsen Media Research.

The MSNBC show drew an average of 164,000 viewers in that demographic to CNN's 156,000, as Olbermann, who has been engaged in a colorful feud with Fox News' Bill O'Reilly, enjoyed an increase of 25% in total viewers compared with this point last year.

In a conversation about gas mileage, Charles Gibson showed he does have some understanding of how when a pie gets bigger, predictions done with static scoring, instead of dynamic scoring, are wildly inaccurate. Unfortunately, he doesn’t apply the same common sense to the affect of tax cuts on the federal deficit.

On this morning’s "Good Morning America" Gibson quizzed GMA financial contributor Mellody Hobson about the new fuel efficiency standards, "Mellody, when you do the math, first of all, we've had increases in mileage requirements in the past and I don't know that it's done anything to break our addiction to foreign oil. And secondly, if you run the math, they're increasing the requirements by 2.4 miles per gallon for SUVs and light pickup trucks over five years. That's an 11 percent improvement over five years. That's not much, is it?"

Drudge links to an AP story about two national book chains who are apparently afraid of having their coffee bars blown up.

Borders and Waldenbooks stores will not stock the April-May issue of Free Inquiry magazine because it contains cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that provoked deadly protests among Muslims in several countries.

"For us, the safety and security of our customers and employees is a top priority, and we believe that carrying this issue could challenge that priority," Borders Group Inc. spokeswoman Beth Bingham said Wednesday.

We saw in the 2000 election cycle that one way national reporters protected Democratic presidential contender Al Gore was to ignore wild or embarrassing things he said in public. The RNC and other Gore critics would play up his gaffes, but the media said "what gaffes"? If they did report the remarks, they didn’t find them overstated or wrong.

It’s not exactly 2008 yet, but the same trend looks to be happening with Sen. Hillary Clinton. She can claim that Republicans would need a "police state" to round up illegal immigrants, and then claim that Republicans would "literally criminalize the good Samaritan and probably even Jesus himself" in their anti-immigration zeal, and some media outlets didn’t notice either one of these outrages. On the hear-no-Hillary-gaffe list: CBS, NBC, National Public Radio, and USA Today. (Nexis search of "hillary and police state" and "hillary and jesus" through March 29.)

Washington Post Radio went on air this morning at 5:30 a.m.

A look at their schedule shows Dana Milbank will be on the radio station's first installment of "The Politics Hour" today at 1 p.m. EST.

NewsBusters.org has repeatedly documented Milbank's bias. Particularly instructive are the infamous hunting suit stunt and disrespectful anti-Catholic rhetoric.

While nothing in life is certain but death and taxes, Milbank ladling out more snark on WTWP's first political roundtable comes close.

The Post's new station can be heard in the D.C. area at 1500 AM and 107.7 FM, or accessed anywhere via the Internet here.

Some might say it wasn't necessarily my finest moment at NewsBusters when, back in December, I speculated that, reporting from a chilly Rockefeller Plaza, Today's Matt Lauer might have been wearing a Palestinian 'solidarity scarf.'  See Keffiyeh-Gate?

At the time, I noted that:

So-called "Palestinian support scarves" have become items of radical fashion chic. Check out this web-site, which advertises "Palestinian support scarves," explaining:

"The traditional Palestinian headdress has become a symbol of support for the Palestinian people against the Israeli occupation. From political rallies to talk shows, supporters of the Palestinian cause have begun donning this traditional scarf as a show of solidarity." [emphasis added]

Journalism.co.uk has an article about how blogs will force journalism to be more professional. Mediocre journalists who produce work inferior to that of bloggers will be cut, as there is no need to keep dross on the payroll. For years, mediocre journalists were sheltered by huge media companies and the lack of transparency.

Among older, traditional journalists there is often a palpable sense of newspaper protectionism: lightweight, predictable, and often just plain wrong assumptions about, and rejection of, the digital age, accompanied by a cosy nostalgia about the sticky, sour smell of the presses and the reassuring crumpliness of the papers they delivered as a lad.

It is an inevitable and very natural process of evolution to resist change, which is why it is refreshing to hear those digital realisations from Jon Snow: a man of, well, some experience.

Both Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank and religion reporter Alan Cooperman covered the "War on Christians" conference Tuesday, but neither touched on one trend in Canada that American evangelicals are warning against: "hate crime" laws that make speech condemning homosexuality illegal. In 2004, the Canadian parliament passed such a law, as U.S. News columnist John Leo explained:

"Canada is a pleasantly authoritarian country," Alan Borovoy, general counsel of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, said a few years ago. An example of what he means is Bill C-250, a repressive, anti-free-speech measure that is on the brink of becoming law in Canada. It would add "sexual orientation" to the Canadian hate propaganda law, thus making public criticism of homosexuality a crime. It is sometimes called the "Bible as Hate Literature" bill, or simply "the chill bill." It could ban publicly expressed opposition to gay marriage or any other political goal of gay groups. The bill has a loophole for religious opposition to homosexuality, but few scholars think it will offer protection, given the strength of the gay lobby and the trend toward censorship in Canada. Law Prof. David Bernstein, in his new book You Can't Say That! wrote that "it has apparently become illegal in Canada to advocate traditional Christian opposition to homosexual sex." Or traditional Jewish or Muslim opposition, too.

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Kudos to CBS News and Lara Logan for undermining a widely reported incident in which U.S. soldiers supposedly killed innocent Iraqis inside a mosque. On Wednesday's CBS Evening News, Logan, who just three days earlier on CNN contemptuously dismissed as “outrageous” Laura Ingraham's criticism of Iraq war coverage for ignoring the courageous work of U.S. servicemen, relayed how “the U.S. says” those killed “were members of a militia responsible for executions and kidnappings who opened fire on elite Iraqi forces carrying out a raid early Sunday evening.” But, “many Iraqis believe they were innocent worshipers praying in a mosque who were slaughtered by American forces. Today the Iraqi commander in charge of that raid, whose identity we can't show for security reasons, told CBS News that was a lie." After soundbites from the Iraqi commander and a kidnap victim they rescued, Logan concluded with how the trouble facing Americans in Iraq is that Iraqis believe “another crime” was committed by Americans: “The American special operations troops who supported the Iraqis on this raid praised both their skill and their restraint. But the continuing problem for the U.S. is the public perception here that what happened Sunday was another crime committed by American forces.” (Transcript follows, plus Logan's attack on Ingraham)

NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams on Wednesday night employed a nice euphemism for left-wing environmental groups (those “who care chiefly about our planet”) , thus without conveying any sense of their ideological agenda, he passed along their ridiculing of the Bush administration for not going far enough in hiking the miles per gallon (mpg) standards for SUVs. In leading with the announcement from the Transportation Department, Williams noted that SUVs “have been considered trucks” and thus “been able to duck the mileage rules for American cars.” Williams, who anchored from Washington, DC, presumably so he could attend the Radio-Television News Directors Association dinner, then relayed how “the folks here in Washington and elsewhere who care chiefly about our planet and the insatiable American need for energy, said these new standards will not, in fact, reduce our consumption of oil.”

Reporter Tom Costello soon highlighted how “environmental groups complain the biggest gas-guzzling pickups on the road are still exempt and mileage standards for both cars and light trucks should be much tougher: 40 miles per gallon, not 24." He concluded with the spin of the environmental groups: "The new standards will add about $200 to the average sticker price, but environmentalists wonder what the country is getting for the money.” (Partial transcript follows.)