The Friday morning and evening broadcast networks shows pounced on how when asked, at the joint Thursday night Bush/Blair press conference, whether he had any regrets about the conduct of the war in Iraq, President Bush responded: “Saying, ‘bring it on.' Kind of tough talk you know that sent the wrong signal to people” and “some lessons about expressing myself maybe in a little more sophisticated manner. You know, ‘wanted dead or alive.'”

CBS Evening News anchor Bob Schieffer suggested Bush isn’t always so honest as he described it as “an unusual burst of candor from President Bush.” Schieffer soon called it an “extraordinary statement” and reporter Jim Axelrod agreed it was “startling.” NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams found Bush’s answer so important that he played a stand-alone clip of the “most interesting moment” and brought aboard Tim Russert who saw a “remarkable, remarkable admission." On her last night as anchor of World News Tonight, ABC’s Elizabeth Vargas asserted that “some of the bold talk we once heard from them is gone. Now they are voicing regrets and admitting mistakes.” Jake Tapper framed a story around how Bush and Blair “came together to project confidence in the new Iraqi government, but perhaps what came across strongest was regret." (Transcripts, and a brief look at the mornings shows, such as how NBC’s Today opened with “Admitting Mistakes” on screen, follow.)

MRC's Michelle Humphrey spotted an incredibly effusive endorsement for Al Gore's new movie "An Inconvenient Truth" in a surprising venue -- the "Daily 10" show on the E! entertainment channel. This is a show apparently geared toward people under 25, if not under 18, with a really young group of hosts (except for thirtysomething Debbie Matenopoulos). As part of the feature called "Lyons' Den," Ben Lyons (son of "Sneak Previews" movie critic Jeffrey Lyons and surprise, a Michael Moore fan) poured on the goo for Gore just after his thumbs-up for the third X-Men film:

Lyons: "I would rather talk about something a little bit more important that needs our support. And that’s the Al Gore film, 'An Inconvenient Truth.'"

Tonight (Friday) will be the last day as anchor of ABC's World News Tonight for Elizabeth Vargas, who after a maternity leave will reportedly return to the weekly 20/20. Before joining ABC in 1996, Vargas toiled at NBC. During her years at ABC, she was a regular fill-in co-host and news reader on Good Morning America and a frequent fill-in on World News Tonight, taking the lead role on that broadcast when Peter Jennings fell ill in early 2005. On the occasion of her stepping down from World News Tonight, from the MRC's archive, a look back at her most biased moments.

For the MRC's collection of 50 biased quotes from Charlie Gibson, who takes over Monday for Vargas, go to this page for the compilation which also features ten videos.

The Today show doesn’t like to judge. In the past, they have used the HBO series Big Love as a pretext to describe polygamy as the "next civil rights battle."  They also had a serious piece on an "artist" who was promoting female public nudity. And now we have the lighter side of child rape. The May 26 edition of NBC’s Today featured an interview with Mary Kay LeTourneau. You may remember her as the women who was convicted in 1997 for having sex with her then 12-year-old student. She has since served a seven year prison sentence and is now married to the former victim, Vili Fualaau, 21. Here’s how Matt Lauer introduced the piece at 7:32AM EDT:

Lauer: "Most skeptics thought it could never last. Theirs was truly a love against all odds. He was a sixth grader in suburban Seattle. She was a star teacher and a married mother of four. What began as a mentorship quickly developed into a sexual affair."

Original caption of this AP photo: "Journalist Helen Thomas, left, receives a plaque honoring her as a Michigan Walk of Fame inductee from Kelly Rossman-McKinney, Thursday, May 25, 2006, at the Michigan Historical Center in Lansing, Mich. Twelve 2006 inductees were recognized for their contributions to Michigan history and culture. Bronze plaques honoring the inductees' accomplishments will be placed in Lansing sidewalks this summer, much like Hollywood's famous sidewalk stars honoring entertainers."

Are American troops savages? Harry Smith grasped onto today's leak in the "New York Times" to suggest so. On CBS’s "The Early Show" this morning, the co-host interviewed General George Casey, commander of coalition forces in Iraq. Smith’s questions focused on the negative, such as alleged atrocities by Marines and the loss of life in Baghdad. He asked nothing about whether hope can be found in the new Iraqi government coming together. Smith’s questions may have been designed to rattle the General, but General Casey remained level headed and confident throughout Smith’s grilling of him.

Smith began the segment by implying that U.S. troops randomly kill civilians:

As we wait for ABC to retract its strange Wednesday night leadoff story asserting Speaker Dennis Hastert was "included" in a federal bribery probe (and ex-Clinton flack George Stephanopoulos called it "potentially seismic"), it is quite obvious there is some serious liberal bias by placement here. The Hastert claims led "World News Tonight" on Wednesday. But what about Monday night, when ABC's Jake Tapper had the story on the FBI finding $90,000 in a Democratic congressman's freezer?

Monday night's broadcast didn't get to Congressman William Jefferson until 20 minutes into the show, with no promotion at the show's beginning. The program began with anchor Elizabeth Vargas promoting four other stories: identity theft against veterans, hurricane forecasts, the health of race horse Barbaro, and a segment on back pain.

In an astounding ruling by a Nebraska District Judge Kristine Cecava,  a child sex offender is given ten years of probation instead of jail time.  The reason - the judge believes that the child sex offender is too short for prison!

Convicted child sex offender, Richard W. Thompson, is reported to be only a 5-foot-1 man and the judge fears that he will not be safe in prison.

This is just another outrageous example of a judge who has lost all common sense.  Did the judge consider the height of the child who Richard W. Thompson violated sexually?  Apparently, not!

Instead, once again, an innocent child of sexual abuse is denied true justice because a demented judge has more regard for the safety of the predator. 

District Judge Kristine Cecava also decided that Thompson would only be electronically monitored for the first four months of his ten year probation, and she  told the child predator  to stay away from using pornography and contacting under age children.

Over at CNSNews.com, a project of the Media Research Center, they have some hot stuff today on the Jesus front. First, we're told the American Family Association is protesting a student-run, taxpayer-funded, newspaper at the University of Oregon for the publication of two cartoons, one showing Jesus in sexual arousal and the other showing him kissing another man.

An official grievance over the cartoons was filed by Students of Faith on April 21. But the University of Oregon ruled that, "The Student Insurgent (newspaper) did not practice discrimination." The university also declared that the newspaper, "through its publication, continues to add to the cultural and physical development of The University Community."  (It's just too funny that the paper is called The Insurgent! We may now seriously doubt any Muhammad cartoons are in the works.) Dawn Rizzoni reported:

As MRC’s Brent Baker pointed out Thursday, there appear to be some serious holes in a story reported by ABC’s Brian Ross on Wednesday’s “World News Tonight.” For those with short memory spans, Ross alleged that House Speaker Dennis Hastert is involved in a congressional bribery investigation. Though this has been fervently denied by the justice department, as well as Hastert's office which is demanding a retraction, ABC is standing by its report.

Well, radio host Laura Ingraham (hat tip to Expose the Left with audio link to follow) reported on Thursday that she received an e-mail message from somebody high up in ABC claiming that Ross’s report was “totally bogus” and “reporters in the press gallery were laughing out loud as the story aired on ABC last night.” Ingraham declared: “This is an example of an agenda driven story without fact-checking, and with shoddy sourcing.”

The e-mail message concluded (alluding to CBS’s embarrassing Memogate in 2004): “Maybe this will be Brian Ross’s Dan Rather moment.”

What follows is a partial transcript of this segment, along with an audio link, both courtesy of Expose the Left.

Have at it, folks.

Jim Rutenberg nabs a front-page byline in Friday's New York Times with his news analysis, “G.O.P. Draws Line in Border,” in which he pits “compassionate” conservatives like Bush who favor some form of amnesty for illegal immigrants against those “doctrinaire” meanies who actually want to enforce and strengthen America's border and immigration laws.

“The negotiations between the White House and Congress that will follow the Senate's passage on Thursday of an immigration bill could decide not just how the nation confronts illegal immigration but also what strain of conservatism the Republican Party carries into the midterm elections and beyond.

No doubt you've heard it several times by now: American Idol garnered more votes than any U.S. President. Ryan Seacreast mentioned it on the show Wednesday night, and a number of articles have mentioned it since then.

It's not true.

Here are the basics. 63 million votes were cast in American Idol - total. This gets compared to the 54.5 million voters that voted for President Ronald Reagan. But Reagan won two elections so 63 million votes isn't more than Reagan has gotten. Then you have to consider that Taylor Hicks didn't get all 63 million votes - that was the total for all contestants. If you compare the total number of people that voted in a given Presidential election compared to the total number of votes in American Idol, the Presidents wins again. And then you have to consider the hundreds of votes cast by a single person, be that a teenaged girl or a script-kiddie with a modem setup to redial the numbers repeatedly.

Finally, if the American public could vote for President without moving their fat cells from the couch, and no doubt Democrats would love that, there would be more votes, but it's probably best that we don't do it that way. It is also worth noting that there is no way to tell just how many calls/votes came from outside America.

You almost expected The Edwin Hawkins Singers to turn up on set. For, short of Hillary raising her right hand on the steps of the Capitol some time in January of 2009, it just doesn't get much happier for Today than this morning. In one fell news cycle, George Bush and Enron evil-doers laid low.

It couldn't have come quick enough for Katie Couric. Interviewing Tim Russert on the president's mea culpa performance of yesterday, in which he and Tony Blair admitted to mistakes in his handling of Iraq, she asked:

"Do you think both men should have tried this approach sooner?"

Lest anyone think that the president's remorse will appease the MSM, it was obvious that, now with a taste of blood, the liberal media pack will only call for more. Couric wasted no time in going after Donald Rumsfeld:

Jason DeParle, assigned by the New York Times to cover the “conservative beat,” reported Thursday that faculty at Georgetown University are hotly rebelling against former Bush Pentagon official Douglas Feith, a "war criminal," in his new gig as a professor at Georgetown University. The headline was sedate: “Faculty’s Chilly Welcome For Ex-Pentagon Official.”

The typically left-wing professoriate at Georgetown may be up in arms, but you would be crestfallen if you believed liberals would be called "liberals" or "leftists" in the DeParle piece, even as Feith is identified as a “neoconservative” favoring war on Saddam Hussein.

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Newsweek's Howard Fineman says:

If you want a date to mark the beginning of the end of the Bush era in American life, you may as well make it this one: May 25, 2006. The Enron jury in Houston didn’t just put the wood to Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling. The jurors took a chainsaw to the moral claims of the Texas-based corporate culture that had helped fuel the rise to power of President George W. Bush.

(What "moral claims" did the "culture" make? Is Fineman claiming that businessmen and women in Texas are pervasively and exceptionally immoral?)

What makes the Fineman piece noteworthy -- almost hilarious -- is Fineman's admittedly admirable attempt to be fair by including caveats to his thesis that Enron belongs on "the debit side of the Bush-era ledger." Fineman's caveats outnumber his proofs by 2-1, resulting in a piece that proves the opposite of what Fineman contends.

A night after ABC’s World News Tonight anchor Elizabeth Vargas hyperbolically led “with a major development in a Washington bribery scandal” in “a story with potentially major political implications” and Brian Ross asserted that “federal officials tell us the congressional bribery investigation now includes the Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert,” which George Stephanopoulos called “potentially seismic," Ross acknowledged that the “Department of Justice issued two separate denials of our report,” yet he stood by his story. Ross asserted on Thursday’s World News Tonight: "As for the facts of our story itself, here is what our sources have confirmed today:” Ross then recited facts that didn’t sound as ominous as his Wednesday hype: How “the FBI interrogation of convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff included specific and repeated questions about his relationship with Speaker Hastert,” how “although Hastert is not a formal target, the FBI has been looking into a letter Hastert and others sent to the Secretary of the Interior” about an Indian casino and “that a few days before the letter was sent, Abramoff hosted a fundraiser for Hastert at a restaurant he owned.” Doesn't "not a formal target" contradict Ross' original claim that the "bribery investigation now includes" Hastert?

Meanwhile, on FNC Morton Kondracke recommended that “ABC should remember Dan Rather and the Bush National Guard case where they didn't do the right thing and say, you know, we can't prove the story and just get rid of it.” And Jeff Birnbaum revealed that “ABC did not call the Speaker until an hour before the broadcast” and “that ABC did not check for an official response from the Justice Department, which seems sort of basic here.” (Transcripts, and video of the Wednesday Ross story, follow)