Stunning news from Expatica's German edition (bolds are mine; because of its brevity, the entire report is included here):

Germans say al-Qaeda no longer organizing strikes

18 May 2006

DUESSELDORF - Al-Qaeda's hierarchy in western Europe has vanished and the terrorist network's leadership has largely ceased direct management of attacks, a senior German police intelligence officer told a trial court this week.

She said the al-Qaeda leadership now mainly relied on video and internet proclamations to inspire Islamists in the western world to act on their own.

Germany's BKA federal crime agency had no evidence of Islamists swearing an oath of loyalty to Osama bin Laden since 2001 to become al-Qaeda members. The only terrorist to have done so since that date was Abu-Musab al-Sarqawi, the Jordanian who mounts attacks in Iraq.

The Associated Press is reporting (hat tip to Drudge) that actress and liberal activist Susan Sarandon has endorsed Jonathan Tasini, a long-shot challenger to Hillary Clinton in the New York senatorial race. According to the article: “Sarandon has been a harsh critic of Clinton's vote on the war, telling a British television interviewer last month that Clinton had ‘crumbled under the pressure of the moment.’ She also told ITV1 that she wasn't enthusiastic about a Clinton presidential candidacy.”

The article continued:

“Announcing Sarandon's endorsement, Tasini called the 59-year old Academy Award winner a ‘passionate advocate for human rights, justice and civil liberties’ and said he was ‘honored’ to have her support.

"'She has never wavered when the call has come for people to stand on the front lines in support of progressive principles that affect the lives of so many people in our country,’ Tasini said.”

So, is this indeed an ominous portent for Hillary’s future with the Hollywood left? Hardly. Sarandon’s views on Sen. Clinton have been all over the map recently:

Illustrating the far-left composition of the faculty at one of the most prestigious journalism schools, Columbia Graduate School of Journalism professor Sandy Padwe called the dismissal by Time magazine, for budget reasons, of investigative reporters Donald Bartlett and James Steele, “a disgrace. Two of the best investigative reporters ever, and they're on the street? It's a f---ing travesty." In fact, at both the Philadelphia Inquirer and Time, Bartlett and Steele delivered shoddy, ideologically-driven left-wing “journalism” which should have embarrassed any journalist with pride in their profession. Nonetheless, in the Thursday CJR Daily posting which quoted Padwe, veteran journalist Steve Lovelady gushed: “Barlett and Steele came to be regarded by many as the premier investigative team in the business, and one that consistently met benchmarks to which others could only aspire.”

In this morning's special "Situation Room" covering General Michael Hayden's confirmation hearings for his appointment as CIA Director, CNN national security correspondent David Ensor said that Hayden could expect questions "about really the most fundamental point for a top intelligence officer. This one, who's been so loyal to the president, when the chips are down and the intelligence doesn't fit what the president wants it to fit, will he speak truth to power?"

Speak truth to power? That vague, usually meaningless catchphrase is a favorite of many liberals. Dan Rather speaks truth to power. Cynthia McKinney speaks truth to power. John Kerry speaks truth to power. And now CNN national security correspondent David Ensor anticipated questions about speaking truth to power.

On The Corner, Kathryn Jean Lopez pays tribute to Charles Hurt's Thursday report for the conservative opposite of the Washington Post:

Also from the Washington Times—the kinda thing that makes you grateful for newspapers like the Washington Times:

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, the Massachusetts Democrat who was the only person to argue against the proposal on the floor yesterday, worried that it would cost too much. The San Diego fence, he noted, wound up being 200 percent over budget.
    "The real cost ended up being $3.8 million per mile," said Mr. Kennedy, who has been the principal backer of Boston's "Big Dig," a highway tunnel funded largely by the federal government that has run about $1 billion per mile.

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Yesterday I noted that Richard Stengel, the recently crowned managing editor of Time magazine, had a documented history of media bias. The Washington Post confirmed that fact today with a brief profile (registration required) on Stengel. He told the Post’s Howard Kurtz that he’d like the magazine to "have a stronger point of view about things." Regarding his own politics, the new managing editor described himself as "a flaming moderate." Stengel also discussed his work as a speechwriter and advisor for 1996 presidential candidate Bill Bradley. The former Senator from New Jersey was Stengel’s idol "from the time I was 9 years old." It’s interesting that a "flaming moderate" would idolize someone who had a lifetime American Conservative Union score of 11. Bill Bradley may be many things, a great basketball player, sure, but he was no moderate.

Stengel, who has written and edited Time magazine for several years, already knows something about giving the magazine a "stronger point of view." On January 12, 2001, he wrote an editorial in the magazine about the inauguration of George W. Bush. In it, he compared the various galas to a "party worthy of British royalty," called it a "coronation" and a "Princess Diana-ish royal spectacle."

The Drudge Report is reporting that a high school in one of California’s most prestigious neighborhoods is going to be sending 1,500 of its students to go see Al Gore’s new movie concerning global warming, “An Inconvenient Truth.” According to the report: “On May 24, 2006, 1,500 Beverly Hills High School students will be boarding 30 gas-guzzling buses across town to see Al Gore's new global warming film 'AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH' at the Arclight Theatre in Hollywood, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.”

Apparently, Drudge got this from a school e-mail message: “‘Sarah Utley, a science teacher at Beverly Hills High School, explained in an e-mail to staff and students: ‘This field trip has been funded by a very generous alum!... You get to see the film for free!!!’"

It appears this teacher has quite a fixation concerning global warming:

ABC has still not pulled the plug on the canceled TV series "Commander in Chief," which featured a woman president. Although the show is no longer a weekly offering because of low ratings, ABC still wants to make a two hour made-for-TV special.

Says Hollywood Reporter:

The one-hour drama about the nation's first female president (Geena Davis) didn't catch on in the ratings, having been pulled off Tuesdays earlier in the season and failing to get traction Thursdays at 10 p.m. It was yanked off the schedule weeks ago and wasn't on the ABC 2006-07 primetime schedule announced early Tuesday.

But ABC Entertainment president Steve McPherson said at a meeting with reporters that "Commander in Chief" wasn't completely retired yet. McPherson said he had been pitched an idea for a two-hour movie by creator and former executive producer Rod Lurie, and was considering it.

Networks fixate on tax cuts ‘for the rich’ while ignoring exploding tax revenues.

While Congress hammered out a $70 billion tax-relief bill last week, the media wasted no time spinning it. After the House approved its version on May 10, the “NBC Nightly News” cited “Democratic critics [who said] the overall bill is heavily tilted in favor of the very wealthy.” At roughly the same time, the “CBS Evening News” presented a graphic to its viewers showing “for incomes of $50,000 or less, you’ll average no more than $46 in savings.”

The following day, ABC’s “Good Morning America” team offered a $20 bill to shoppers at a New Jersey mall as a cynical demonstration of how little this tax cut would help some Americans.

All totaled, the broadcast networks did 16 reports on this issue in their three-day blitzkrieg, largely with the same predictable mantra: tax cuts favor the rich. Conspicuously absent was an honest assessment of just how much lower wage earners in America have benefited from the most recent income tax changes, as well as how much the government has benefited from higher tax revenues.

The Truth Hurts
Without question, the best thing government can do for low-income families is not burden them with income taxes. Toward that goal, according to a March 30 report by the Tax Foundation’s Scott Hodge, the percentage of Americans not paying any federal income taxes has exploded in the past few years as a result of recent tax changes:

Speaking in the Headlines and Biographies lecture series at Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto, Dan Rather says today's journalists have an "urge to be so polite, this mandate not to offend anyone - anywhere."

Journalists afraid to bash President Bush? That's unlikely. Of course, the president's low approval ratings have more to do with conservatives hating Bush than liberals, and Rather could not possibly understand criticisms of Bush that did not originate from left-wing MSM initiatives.

Reports Canadian Press:

The veteran U.S. television journalist lamented a trend in today's news that sees reporters rely on euphemisms and tact as though they were conducting international diplomacy instead of telling people exactly what is happening in places like Washington or Ottawa.

"I don't know where this urge to be so polite, this mandate not to offend anyone - anywhere, anytime - came from, but in a journalistic sense, I wish it would go away," he said.

It's no secret that the media has a bias when it comes to "climate change" that's friendly to environmentalists who blame human activity, essentially modern economic growth, for global warming. But what may surprise you is just how long the media's fixation with global warming/cooling goes back.

The MRC's Business & Media Institute (formerly the Free Market Project) just released a study that found that The New York Times has led the way in predicting global catastrophe from climate change as early as 1895.

The BMI study "found that many publications now claiming the world is on the brink of a global warming disaster said the same about an impending ice age – just 30 years ago. Several major ones, including The New York Times, Time magazine and Newsweek, have reported on three or even four different climate shifts since 1895."

Like most of his fellow critics, the Times A.O. Scott gives a ho-hum thumbs down to "The DaVinci Code" (in which a mortal Jesus is at the center of an elaborate fraud, with the Catholic Church as a murderous conspiracy) but doesn’t see anything to get offended by:

"In any case Mr. Howard and Mr. Goldsman handle the supposedly provocative material in Mr. Brown's book with kid gloves, settling on an utterly safe set of conclusions about faith and its history, presented with the usual dull sententiousness. So I certainly can't support any calls for boycotting or protesting this busy, trivial, inoffensive film. Which is not to say I'm recommending you go see it."

Talk about handing the media a gift. Yesterday's altercation between employees of the two Republican candidates for governor - at a forum that included the Democrat - gave the Rocky Mountain News's Stuart Strears a chance to focus on the Republicans' arguments and the Democrat's message:

An intern for the Holtzman campaign, Laura Mendenhall, tried to block a Beauprez staffer, Jory Taylor, from videotaping the event. That outraged the Beauprez campaign, which says it routinely tapes such forums.

"They were shoving him out of the way," said John Marshall, a spokesman for Beauprez. "They totally accosted him. This is just junior high school stuff. It's disappointing and juvenile and not befitting a campaign for the highest office in Colorado."

After a couple days in which the only people offered the opportunity to comment on the controversy surrounding the Da Vinci Code were the movie's director and cast members, this morning's Today show finally gave an outside expert and Catholic officials their shot. The result was an oddly ambivalent reaction in which the movie was simultaneously praised as offering an opportunity to teach about the Church - and condemned as filled with lies.

A quick recap on the state of play at Today. Matt Lauer has been "On the Road with the Code" this week. On Tuesday, as reported here, NBC reporter Melissa Stark timidly raised the matter of the controversy with Code director Ron Howard. Stark didn't bother informing viewers just what all the fuss is about - which is none other than the movie's premise that Christ wasn't really divine, that he was married to Mary Magdalene and had children with her, that the true religion is the "feminine divine" and that the Roman Catholic Church has perpetrated a murderous patriarchal plot to suppress the truth. That's all!

Last week, the Minutemen came to town to protest illegal immigration, but The Washington Post shunned them to the inside of the Metro section, to page B-3. Their crowd was estimated at just 150. On Wednesday, the pro-illegal immigration advocates came to Capitol Hill again, and the Post estimated the gathering at about 400. That's also what you might call an inside-the-Metro-section crowd.

Think again. The rally itself made page A-13 today, complete with yet another color photo of American flags in the sun. The story by Karin Brulliard and Krissah Williams was headlined "Immigrant Advocates Take Their Case to Capitol Hill: Activists Lobby Members of Congress, Aides on Legislation." But its most prominent placement was the dominant story on the top of the front page of the Style section by the very protester-friendly David Montgomery. It was titled "An Up-the-Hill Battle: Even Without Citizenship, Immigrants Embrace a Chance to Become Activists," but should have said "Illegal Immigrants" were the lobbyists celebrated.

May 17, 2006 4:57 PM

Christopher Isham Reports:

Former White House counter-terrorism official Richard Clarke, now an ABC News consultant, will be portrayed by Sean Penn in the Sony film of Clarke's "Against All Enemies."   The book chronicles what happened inside the White House leading up to and through the 9/ll attacks. The film will be directed by Paul Haggis.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2006/05/penn_to_play_cl.html

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