NBC brought Tom Brokaw back onto the NBC Nightly News on Wednesday to trumpet Al Gore’s “stylish and compelling movie” which “graphically describes the realities and consequences of global warming."

Sitting at the anchor desk with Brian Williams, Brokaw gushed: "Brian, the Vice President's film tonight, which is called An Inconvenient Truth, is a stylish and compelling video version of an argument that he's been making for a long time, that global warming is real and it's getting worse.” Brokaw presumed Gore’s claims are accurate as he touted how “the man who lost the presidency in the U.S. Supreme Court is suddenly everywhere again, the leading man in a new documentary that graphically describes the realities and consequences of global warming." Gore sat down with Brokaw for an interview and Brokaw pressed him about running again for President after heralding how "Gore's high-profile involvement in this film and in other public appearances these days is causing a political buzz." Back at the anchor desk, Williams asked if Gore’s movie offers any solutions. Brokaw offered up a plug for Gore’s hysterical Web site before noting a shortcoming: "Well, they direct you to a Web site called ClimateCrisis.Com. They don't deal with nuclear power which many people believe is one of the solutions that will have to be examined.” (Transcript follows)

On tonight's CBS Evening News, David Martin reported on a story about Specialist Kendell Frederick and his quest for citizenship. Martin interviewed Specialist Frederick's mother, Michelle Murphy, about the red tape that delayed the approval of his citizenship application. The delay was due to a lack of a signature on his fingerprint form. Specialist Frederick was serving in Iraq and went to Camp Anaconda to have another fingerprint form completed. On the way back to his base, the convoy was hit by an IED. Specialist Frederick died on October 19, 2005.

Mrs. Murphy showed Martin a letter from Specialist Frederick's Commander explaining that her son was in the convoy solely to get his fingerprint form completed. At this point in the report Martin was shown speaking with a representative of USCIS. David Martin actually claimed that Specialist Frederick was "killed by red tape". Martin went on to say Specialist Frederick "had to die to get his citizenship".

Hey got a new book? Want it featured on the Today show? Try putting Ann Curry on the cover! The new book Extraordinary Women: Fantasies Revealed was featured in the 9:30 half hour of this morning's Today show. The cover of the book happens to feature Curry actually embracing the Earth. Curry even appeared as a guest on the segment with the book's authors. Natalie Morales conducted the interview and revealed Ann's not-so-secret fantasy: "And Ann the reason you are holding the globe is you talk about wanting to be a humanitarian, which as a journalist, I mean you do, I mean that's really a priority in your life." But one of the book's authors Ilene Leventhal pointed out Curry, as a liberal crusading journalist, is already living her dream: "I said to Ann, I said, 'Ann you already are a humanitarian.'"

Good Morning America and Today weren’t alone in expressing their enthusiasm over the return of Al Gore to the public eye. At 4:30PM EDT on CNN’s The Situation Room, political analyst Bill Schneider not only promoted Gore’s new global warming documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, but a potential Gore candidacy for president, as well. Schneider gushed:

Wolf, the new Al Gore movie opens today. Is it a star is born or could it be a political star is reborn? Could this be Al Gore’s moment?

Schneider applauded the timing of the documentary’s release and claimed Truth is "not overtly partisan," before using clips from the film to slam President Bush over one of his "greatest failures." Pointing to Richard Nixon’s comeback win for the White House in 1968, Schneider seemed to express glee that history could repeat itself in Gore’s favor:

The women of The View are angry with the Dixie Chicks. Because of the group’s exploitative liberal politics? Because of their hollow claims of being censored? No. Apparently, it’s because the Dixie Chicks don’t think the ABC talk show is very hip. According to a Fox News report, band member Emily Robison said the following in the current issue of Time magazine:

"Dixie Chicks lead singer Natalie Maines' new motto is, 'What would Bruce Springsteen do?' says Robison. ‘Not that we're of that caliber, but would Bruce Springsteen do The View?’"

Unsurprisingly, this angered the stars of the show in question. On the May 23 edition, co-host and future anchor of the Today show, Meredith Vieira described the situation this way:

Vieira: "First, you know, they alienate their fan base by going after President Bush. Now they have gone too far in Time magazine. We are furious! Furious!"

Imagine that Washington Post reporter Dana Milbank were profiling a Democrat who was as steadfastly liberal as Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama is conservative. The column virtually writes itself. We can imagine the liberal described as "putting principle above expediency", "courageous," perhaps even "speaking truth to power."

But when it comes to a conservative such as Sessions, that same adherence to principle is cast in the most negative light. Consider these excerpts from Milbank's column of today, Forget Politics. This Battle Is Personal. which focuses on Sessions' stand on immigration:

• "Jeff Sessions sure knows how to nurse a grudge."
• "Now he is turning his prodigious anger on legislation."
• "A stream of epithets about the legislation flowed from his mouth."
• "He argues his points not with the courtly Southern tones of the late senator Howell Heflin (D), his predecessor, but with the harsh twang of a country tough -- which, in a sense, he is."
  
  
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On Tuesday, the New York Times published a delicate article attempting to calculate how much time Bill and Hillary Clinton spend together these days and whether their strange marriage will have negative impact on her ambitions to run for president, as some Democrats worry. (The Times headline called the subject a "delicate dance.") Only Democrats, aides, and friends were quoted. On Wednesday’s edition of Today on NBC, reporter Norah O'Donnell regurgitated the story with even more sensitivity.

Katie Couric and O'Donnell couldn't even locate the idea that Democrats get heartburn just thinking about rewinding the country back through the adultery politics of the 1990s. Couric spun it like they were just a political version of Brangelina: "When Bill Clinton burst on to the national political scene he promoted his wife Hillary as an equal political partner saying, 'two heads were better than one.' They enjoyed some of the highest highs and endured some of the lowest lows as well during their years in the White House. But now that Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is eyeing her own bid for the presidency a lot of folks are asking where's Bill?"

A half hour after championing Al Gore's "comeback" on Tuesday's Good Morning America (see this earlier NewsBusters item), the show celebrated the Dixie Chicks and their new album, treating them as victims for the negative reaction to the lead singer's 2003 charge, from overseas, that she was "ashamed" to be from the same state as President Bush. Diane Sawyer fretted over how "suddenly country radio stations pulled their music, people destroyed the album, hounded their relatives and tracked them down with death threats." But, she touted, "they are roaring back. It is a new album called 'Taking the Long Way' and in it they dare to announce, at least when it comes to the haters, they're not ready to make nice. They are spirited, unbowed and they are back with a new single called 'Not Ready to Make Nice.'" Sawyer insisted that "among their biggest supporters were the soldiers fighting in Iraq who said they were fighting for the right to freedom of thought and speech." After highlighting how the group's video features a hit on Vice President Cheney -- "to talk without thinking is to shoot without aiming" -- Sawyer read a sympathetic e-mail to them: "Do you feel basically that you've been vindicated and that the American public moved to your position?" (Transcript follows)

Once again Harry Smith reported from Baghdad for this morning’s Early Show. This morning, his focus was talking with ordinary Iraqis about their life during the war, and Harry Smith may have once again been surprised when he heard one Iraqi thank America and all Americans who supported the war for what they did for Iraq. Rene Syler opened this segment:

Rene Syler: "We see opinion polls almost weekly telling us how Americans feel about the war in Iraq. But what do ordinary Iraqis think? Harry's live in Baghdad with that story. Harry, good morning."

Harry Smith: "Rene, an extraordinary opportunity. Seven Iraqi young men, all in their 20s, all college educated, they all speak English. We talked about everything from the danger of their everyday lives to Saddam Hussein and the role of America in this country. Now their answers will enlighten you, and they may surprise you."

On the same morning that Katie Couric was twinkling and giggling over Al Gore in some flowery garden, her co-host Matt Lauer took another senator from Tennessee to task: Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. Near the end of the interview, Lauer pressed Frist on how "critics" say his choice of legislative issues coming up shows he's "pandering to the conservative base" for a potential presidential campaign:

"Alright let me move on briefly for a second. The House has approved a constitutional amendment to make flag burning illegal and passed a bill to crack down on the practice of minors traveling across state borders to seek an abortion to avoid restrictions in their own state. You've said the Senate will look at those things this year as well as a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. Now critics have said there's no chance that any of those things are going to pass and they go a step further and say you are pandering to the conservative base preparing for a run for the presidency in 2008. How do you respond?"

Would you believe that Wells Fargo Bank accepted 7 stolen PG&E checks, payable solely to "The Madden Company", but stolen and endorsed as, "SAVIN Corporation", with a handwritten signature on checks with a face value of $309,000 and $205,000?

Not only were there illegal endorsements on these stolen checks, and they were for hundreds of thousands of dollars, but the payee on these checks was not even a Wells Fargo Bank customer!

Wells Fargo Bank had no authority from The Madden Company to process any checks payable to them, without the legal endorsements on the checks from The Madden Company.  But, they were just the "patsy" for SAVIN Corporation, owned by RICOH (Japan).

SAVIN knowingly tried to deceive Wells Fargo Bank, we think.  The only other way that our stolen checks could have been accepted and processed is if they had help from Wells Fargo Bank, considering the checks were payable to someone else.  This is the description of "fraud."

At National Review Online today, Stephen Spruiell of NRO's Media Blog reviews a new book charging the liberal media are a pound full of poodles for the White House. It's like a modern-day reworking of Mark Hertsgaard's Reagan-era tract On Bended Knee -- the last time an author wrote a laugh-out-loud expose of the supposedly wimpy/conservative national media sucking up to a president:

Eric Boehlert would freak out if you were to point out to him how much his book Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush reads like a mirror image of the conservative press criticism he despises. According to Boehlert, the “fear of conservative press critics”—or “The Press Haters” as he calls them (us) in a chapter by that name—is one of the factors that brought about the mainstream media’s transformation from the snarling, merciless pit bulls of the Clinton years to the cowardly, right-leaning lapdogs of today. If Boehlert’s book itself could be considered an argument, it would be that the Left must emulate these critics so that the media will stop being “[a]fraid of the facts and the consequences of reporting them.”

As his environmental apocalypse "documentary" makes its debut in New York and Los Angeles today, there's nothing "inconvenient" standing in the way of Al Gore's crusade in the New York Times.

From the Cannes Film Festival, chief movie critic A.O. Scott reviews “An Inconvenient Truth” for Page 1 of Wednesday’s Arts page. Scott, the same critic who called left-wing “documentary”-maker Michael Moore “a credit to the republic,” predictably finds Al Gore’s view of environmental apocalypse to be “chilling” and “necessary.”

After successfully putting the kibosh on a "South Park" episode that made fun of scientology and himself, actor Tom Cruise has expanded his censorship efforts overseas where he's succeeded in getting the same episode pulled in the U.K.:

The South Park episode "Trapped In the Closet," which mocks actor Tom Cruise's rumored homosexuality as well as his belief in the controversial religion Scientology, has finally been seen by the English. The episode had been banned from UK broadcaster Channel 4 after Cruise had complained.

According to the World Entertainment News Network, London's National Film Theater screened the episode on Monday, May 15. After the showing, South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker spoke about the necessity of free speech. The event concluded with free copies of the episode being handed out to attendees.

In regards to possible action by the litigious Cruise, a spokesman for the Theater said, "If we were charging [for tickets] there may have been legal problems, but it was a free event, so it should be fine."

Patriotic American users of Microsoft's Hotmail service may be surprised when trying to obtain an email address. The company does not allow new users to sign up for a user name containing the word "american."

At first glance, it seemed that Hotmail is taking precaution to limit phishing attempts which often rely on official-sounding addresses to trick recipients into paying money to people posing as governmental entities. However, my quick check showed that names with "canadian," "francais," "german," "australian," "english," and "deutsch," are all allowed.

Let's imagine that instead of Al Gore, Katie Couric's guest this morning was a Republican presidential hopeful whose message on the environment was that we should not let alarmism push us into measures that would undermine our economy and way of life. Could you ever - ever! - imagine Katie flashing at him the 10,000 megawatt smile she has on display here for Al?

There's one more dead giveaway that Katie & Co. are getting aboard the Al Gore Enviro Train. When Today really wants to play up an issue, they brand it. Last week, flacking for the Da Vinci Code, Today sent Matt Lauer for a week "On The Road with the Code."

In introducing Gore, there to promote his global warming book and movie 'An Inconvenient Truth', Couric announced:

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

On Tuesday afternoon, we posted our latest Special Report on religion and the news media, titled The Trashing of the Christ: Contrasts In Media Treatment of The DaVinci Code and The Passion. Both films received an extraordinary amount of network TV news attention before they were released, but we found that much of the Code coverage was gooey and giddy, with lots of talk from network stars about how they "couldn't wait" to see it.

In 2004, the networks showed hostility to a more orthodox vision of Jesus in the movie The Passion of the Christ. So MRC analysts compared coverage of the year before The Passion (March 2003 through February 2004) and the year before The DaVinci Code movie (May 19, 2005 through May 18, 2006) on the morning, evening, prime-time and late-night news programs of ABC, CBS, and NBC. Some key findings were: