Today's Washington Post carries the article "Religious Liberals Gain New Visibility." Religious liberals are intensely organizing and alliance-building, "according to scholars, politicians and clergy members."

One of the scholars quoted is Clemson University political scientist Laura R. Olson, who states: "Organizationally speaking, strategically speaking, the religious left is now in the strongest position it's been in since the Vietnam era."

Things must have turned around quickly. Less than six months ago, the same professor wrote in Newsweek: "Yet there are practical reasons to believe that religious progressives on the ground are not well connected either with each other or with the elite-level organizations that share their policy agenda. The religious Left may also be stymied by its diversity and the fact that many of its leaders endorse what might be termed 'scriptural relativism.'

Does the NYT so hate the military that they even refuse to learn the slightest thing about it? Apparently they have such disdain for the US military they cannot even find a writer in their employ that knows even standard facts about the military, much less an editor that knows enough to make the proper corrections.

On may 11th, the NYT published a story about the funeral of Sgt. Jose Gomez which featured right at the top of the page a photograph of the Sgt's Mother and Father at the funeral, Mom being consoled by a member of the US military. The caption of this photo identifies that member of the US military as an "officer" when the soldier in question is clearly wearing the rank of Sgt. First Class. (See story –Click Here- Registration required)

In a piece for last Monday’s Washington Post, the paper's culture critic, Philip Kennicott, noted that this past week, the Katzen Arts Center at American University in Washington simultaneously hosted two events. One was the National Endowment for the Arts’ fortieth-anniversary celebration; the other was a non-NEA-funded exhibition that featured “art as provocation, political commentary, utopian imagination, protest and, sometimes, pure unmitigated rage. It deals with gender, race, war and imperialism.”

An editorial in Saturday's Washington Times highlighted the discovery by the MRC's Rich Noyes, as detailed in a Friday NewsBusters posting, about how “Leslie Cauley, the USA Today reporter who 'broke' the news that three major U.S. telecommunications companies were assisting the National Security Agency in building a database to more easily track any communications by potential terrorists, is listed as a donor to former House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt, according to a search of the Center for Responsive Politics Web site.”

The May 20 editorial, “Spinning, Spying and USA Today,” recounted: “With Verizon and BellSouth both challenging USA Today's report on their alleged participation in NSA's surveillance programs, it's not yet clear whether or to what extent the claims in the Gannett daily's much-discussed article are true. What's clearer is that USA Today reporter Leslie Cauley has ties to the Democratic Party, which the Media Research Center's 'NewsBusters' Web site unearthed yesterday. Searching through campaign-filing records, Rich Noyes discovered that Miss Cauley gave $2,000 to then-Democratic presidential hopeful Dick Gephardt in 2003. That's the type of activity that journalists normally avoid if they wish to be perceived as objective...” (How Rush Limbaugh also picked up the posting, follows)

In its segment on illegal immigration and the proposed amendment to make English the country's official language, this morning's Today show pitted the following against a sole Republican senator: another senator who just happens to be the Minority Leader, the director of a school that teaches English to immigrants, the head of the association of immigration lawyers, and the NBC reporter himself, Mike Taibbi, who described the current atmosphere as 'nasty' and implied that the English language amendment was unnecessary. Along the way, Today even managed to coin a new euphemism for 'illegals.'

Taibbi began the segment reporting from what appeared to be a private-sector school in Queens, NY called the New York Language Center. Taibbi pointedly observed that at the school: "they learn one language. English. America's official national language, if a Senate amendment to a new immigration law passes." Not-so-subtle sub-text: "See, immigrants are already learning English. No amendment necessary."

In recent months, ABC reporter Bill Blakemore has been a passionate proponent for getting all that harmful objectivity and balance out of reporting on the impending disaster of global warming. (See here, or here, or here.) So it shouldn't be surprising -- it should flow naturally, like a melting glacier -- that Blakemore is using ABC's World Newser blog to plug Al Gore's new documentary "An Inconvenient Truth." The filmmakers could use Blakemore's review here as a promotional blurb. He calls it "96 minutes well spent," says "Regardless of your politics, it's riveting and informative," not to mention "remarkably clear, concise, and informative."

On NBC's "Daily Nightly" blog, Senior Producer Gena Fitzgerald noted the Senate's passage of an official-English bill as a sad occasion, and she puzzled about "what this means to a nation that’s always seen itself as a cultural melting pot." But Gena, how does the country "melt" together without immigrants learning a little English? She made it sound like one of those annoying Republican initiatives like renaming "freedom fries," and decided to mock it:

But it does give us pause to wonder: If the Congress succeeds in making this an English-only nation, perhaps they should start on Capitol Hill and see how it goes first. They’ll have to begin with the nation’s motto: "E Pluribus Unum." That would be Latin, and means "One from Many." Senators, if you all pitch in on weekends, it should not take long to redo all those government office buildings, and then the country's currency.

Bob Schieffer on Friday decided to use the uprising at Guantanamo as an opportunity to express his disdain for the detention facility. Schieffer opened the CBS Evening News by asking: “Has the U.S. prison for terror suspects at Guantanamo become more trouble than it's worth?” He then presumed: “Even those who created it have to be asking that question tonight.” Schieffer listed a litany of reasons it should be closed, “It has generated reams of bad publicity for the United States, today a UN committee said it ought to be shut down because it violates the Geneva Convention, and now the latest: Prisoners wielding improvised weapons lured ten guards into an ambush and a riot broke out.” (Uninterrupted transcript follows)

On Friday's Countdown show on MSNBC, substitute host Brian Unger lived up to Keith Olbermann's habitually liberal standards as he portrayed recent efforts by Senate Republicans to declare English America's official language and to ban gay marriage as a "hard turn to the right." He hearkened back to the "exclusionary rhetoric" of the 1992 Republican convention that spelled a "political disaster" for Republicans, and wondered if it could be "1992 all over again." Regarding the proposed gay marriage ban, Unger referred to it as part of the "far right's greatest hit list," and characterized the Senate Judiciary Committee vote for a constitutional amendment as "tossing social conservatives a straight-as-an-arrow bone."

In spite of a recent Zogby poll showing 84 percent of Americans, including 77 percent of Hispanics, support making English the nation's official language, Unger teased the show wondering if Republicans would "alienate the American middle": "Could these two right turns alienate the American middle? What playing to the Republican base could mean for the President and voters come midterm election." He introduced the show by recounting the 1992 Republican convention which renominated former President George H.W. Bush: "The 1992 Republican convention was widely regarded as a political disaster in which the party's social conservatives managed to alienate swing voters with their exclusionary rhetoric. A new cultural war was launched, and not coincidentally, it was the Democratic ticket that managed to win the '92 election. Our fifth story on the Countdown, could it be '92 all over again?" (Transcript follows)