Just when you're ready to write Chris Matthews off as a hopeless liberal, he pulls something like he did tonight, criticizing the New York Times for its latest leak of an anti-terror program.

Matthews' guests were the Rev. Al Sharpton and conservative radio talk show host Melanie Morgan. On the subject of the Times leak, Sharpton predictably proclaimed that the Gray Lady was "absolutely right," while Morgan sided with President Bush. That's when Matthews weighed in with his surprising pronouncement:

"Melanie, on this issue, believe it or not, I'm with you. I think the Times should not have run that story, I don't think we needed to know that. It wasn't really about us; it was of more interest to the enemy."

Actual caption:

A pedestrian passes the New York Times building in April 2006 in New York City. US President George W. Bush said that there was "no excuse" for news accounts last week that gave details of a secret program to track and disrupt terrorism financing.(AFP/Getty Images/File/Spencer Platt)

How about:

"Yep, got the nuclear launch codes right here, ready for publication."

"So this is what it's like to commit treason. I thought I'd feel all tingly inside."

Actual caption:

A New York Times reader riding the subway during the morning rush hour in July, 2005, in New York City. The New York Times hit back at bitter government criticism of its decision to disclose details of a secret US anti-terror program to monitor global banking transactions.(AFP/Getty Images/File/Mario Tama)

How about:

"I didn't know my son was in the CIA. I'll pretend I don't know."

One of the 9/11 Whistleblowers, Andrew Richard Grove, has a great website. He details alot of the financial information and who made out before and after 9/11.

www.8thestate.com is the main site.

http://www.8thestate.com/?page_id=23 has all of the radio broadcasts that he has done. Start with the first one (june 4) then work your way up.

The uproar over last week's New York Times expose' of the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program still isn't cacophonous enough for National Journal media columnist William Powers:

Watching the story play out, I've found myself hoping...that the conflict will get hotter and uglier and eventually wind up in court...Why? Because this country needs to have a great, big, loud, come-to-Jesus argument about the role of the press in a time of war, terror, and secrecy.

...A poll...conducted by the McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum in Chicago recently found that Americans know more about The Simpsons than they do about the First Amendment -- a lot more.

Once again, CNN has highlighted calls for the impeachment of President Bush. During the 4PM EDT hour of Thursday’s The Situation Room, senior political analyst Bill Schneider reported on the liberal city council of Berkeley, California’s decision to place a measure on the November ballot calling for the impeachment of the President and Vice President Cheney. Schneider highlighted the reasons for the city council’s decision to go "one step further" than other liberal municipalities, such as those in Vermont, which passed resolutions calling for impeachment :

This week, the Berkeley, California city council went one step further and put an impeachment measure on the November ballot. The grounds? Lying about the case for war in Iraq, torture of detainees and unlawful domestic spying.

The homepage of NewsBusters.org was displayed on CNN briefly during the 7am EDT hour of American Morning. The blink-and-you'll-miss it moment was during an Andrea Koppel report on the House Republican resolution condeming the New York Times for its publication of a story that revealed a secret government program to track terrorists by monitoring international financial transactions. 

The NewsBusters homepage was on-screen during this segment of Koppel's voiceover:

 House Republicans are not alone in targeting the New York Times, along with other media. For days, bloggers have been up in arms, while conservative talk radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh have had a field day.

The 70-year-old comic book superhero Superman has always had the longtime slogan, "Truth, justice, and the American way." But in the latest movie reincarnation of the Man of Steel, the slogan is a little different: "Truth, justice and all that stuff."

The makers of the movie claim that "the world is different" than it was in the 40's and 50's, and that the film has to be applicable for movie watchers around the world.

Says Hollywood Reporter:

While audiences in Dubuque might bristle at Superman's newfound global agenda, patrons in Dubai likely will find the DC Comics protagonist more palatable. And with the increasing importance of the overseas boxoffice -- as evidenced by summer tentpoles like "The Da Vinci Code" -- foreign sensibilities can no longer be ignored.

One of the writers of the screenplay, Dan Harris, says "the American way" doesn't mean the same thing anymore.

In the James Bond-007 movie, The Man with the Golden Gun (1974), Louisiana sheriff and full-blooded redneck J.W. Pepper reprises his role from the preceding Bond flick, Live and Let Die (1973).

An interesting thing happens to the sheriff's dialogue in The Man with the Golden Gun in a scene shot along the canals in Bangkok, Thailand. Pepper and his wife are on vacation there at the same time Bond is in town trying to find a missing “solex” device – a key to solving the global energy crisis via solar power. (This was during the '70s oil crisis.)

Pepper’s wife is admiring hand-carved wood elephants and the sheriff rebukes her with the comment: “We’re Democrats!” His remark implies that the symbol of the Republican Party is not going to find a place in his home. Nearly 30 years later, however, his comment has morphed to: “They’re Democrats!” This version implies that the sheriff is simply confused and thinks that the elephant is the symbol of the Democratic Party and that he – being a terribly backward and horribly ignorant man, a.k.a., a Neanderthal – is, of course, a Republican who, no surprise, doesn’t even know his own political party’s symbol and has rejected the elephant, not wanting the symbol of the Democrats in his home.

"Legendary" liberal White House reporter (now Hearst columnist) Helen Thomas appeared on Comedy Central's "Daily Show" on Tuesday night to promote her new book attacking the rolling-over-for-Dubya-like-puppies press corps, titled "Watchdogs of Democracy?" The exchange displayed typical, hard-left Helen, laughing at the idea that President Bush has accomplished anything and asserting that we should be spreading democracy through blue jeans and rap music. (I kid you not.) Host Jon Stewart began by asking about how long she's been in the White House -- since 1961.

Stewart: "Who was your favorite?"

The Today show had many important subjects to discuss today, issues such as examining the details of Star Jones’ firing from The View in excruciating detail. However, co-host Campbell Brown did manage to squeeze in a quick interview with Senator John McCain on the Supreme Court’s military tribunal ruling. The segment, which aired at 7:07AM EDT, featured the typical media employment of leading questions and suggestions that "many" people believe Guantanamo Bay should be shut down. In this "balanced" question, Brown wondered what effect the ruling would have on President Bush’s other anti-terrorism policies:

Minneapolis Star-Tribune writer Eric Black says the campaign for Mark Kennedy, the Republican challenger to the Minnesota Senate seat held by Democrat Mark Dayton, has declared that it has two opponents to fight: The Amy Klobuchar campaign and the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, which it says is conducting a de facto campaign of its own in favor of the Democrat.

The Mark Kennedy campaign has either come unhinged (for reasons about which I shall not speculate), or has decided that to beat Amy Klobuchar, Kennedy has to run against the Star Tribune.

In a June 28 e-mail to supporters, Kennedy Campaign Manager Pat Shortridge urgently requests campaign donations by tomorrow (so they can be included in the June 30 reporting period), because only by raising buckets of dough-re-mi can Kennedy hope to overcome the disadvantages of being covered by a newspaper that is little more than the publicity arm of the Amy Klobuchar campaign.

Remember that USA Today article from May 11 alleging that “[t]he National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth?” Well, the USA Today just issued a retraction:

 “Based on its reporting after the May 11 article, USA TODAY has now concluded that while the NSA has built a massive domestic calls record database involving the domestic call records of telecommunications companies, the newspaper cannot confirm that BellSouth or Verizon contracted with the NSA to provide bulk calling records to that database.”

To begin your Fourth of July holiday weekend with a bang, read the entire delicious retraction here.

Al Jazeera International, the planned English-language news channel, has languished as it encounters unexpected difficulties such as finding U.S. satellite and cable operators willing to carry it.

Another challenge it faces is a loss of independence. Initially, the new channel pledged to be independent from the Arab parent company, as they hired mainstream American journalists and acquired studio facilities in the U.S. But TV Newser reports that the promised independence is now lost due to a corporate shakeup in Qatar, the Middle East country that hosts Al Jazeera.

"You read it here first. Al Jazeera International will launch in November," the U.K.'s Press Gazette's Adrian Monck writes. "And not November 2010 either. This November. Now it doesn't seem that long ago -- November 2004 in fact -- that AJI boss Nigel Parsons was announcing ambitious plans to launch in, erm, November 2005."

"President Bush has broken the law!" That's how viewers of MSNBC's Hardball were greeted last night when Chris Matthews first came on the air. You get the sense that Matthews has been dying to utter those words for a long time now and the Supreme Court's Guantanamo decision gave him the excuse to do so. In the MRC's annals of jarring and incredibly biased openings this ranks right up there with Katie Couric's: "Good morning, the Gipper was an airhead!" The following is Matthews full introduction to last night's Hardball:

Chris Matthews: "President Bush has broken the law. That's the verdict of the Supreme Court. Bush says he can try prisoners on Guantanamo without courts martial or Geneva Convention rules. The court says he's wrong, that he's overreached his lawful powers as president. Let's play Hardball. Good evening. I'm Chris Matthews and welcome to Hardball. President Bush's wartime powers took a major hit today when the Supreme Court ruled he overstepped his authority in creating military tribunals for prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. The Court concluded by a 5-3 vote that the tribunals were illegal and violated the Geneva Conventions and U.S. military law."

Should we look for Matt Lauer to close his next interview of Condi Rice by clasping her hands? Perhaps a verklempt Dick Cheney thanking Campbell Brown for "standing by me through every crisis"? Could be, judging by Al Roker's interview of Star Jones this morning.

OK. Star isn't Secretary of State. She's someone who got bounced as co-host of a televised coffee klatsch. Even so, some of the journalistic values on display were eye-brow raising. For openers, what does it say about Today's news values that the interview, stretching across two half-hours and three segments, was the longest this veteran Today watcher can remember?

And then there was the personal relationship between Al and Star. The flag first went up when Star thanked Al for having phoned her with information: "I actually remember a phone call when you saw something in the paper that I had not even seen that was pretty nasty."

Over the course of the past few weeks – and much to the delight of many conservative new media journalists – no less than seven major news outlets have published rather derogatory articles about Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, the highly-successful proprietor of the überleft-leaning blog Daily Kos.

Conspicuously at the same time, most media avoided or downplayed the recently revealed stock fraud allegations surrounding Zuniga’s colleague and co-author Jerome Armstrong – the man that helped Howard Dean’s presidential campaign back in 2004, and is now working for 2008 Democrat presidential candidate Mark Warner.

As this negative media focus came soon after Zuniga’s much-heralded liberal bloggers’ convention, The Yearly Kos, in Las Vegas – where the usual media suspects were writing great praise for the event as well as for Kos himself – some awkward and so far unspoken questions arise:

The U.S. House voted 227 to 183 to adopt a resolution condemning publications that exposed the the classified bank-monitoring program that the resolution declared was "consistent with Federal law."

Four points were resolved:

Now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That the House of Representatives--

(1) supports efforts to identify, track, and pursue suspected foreign terrorists and their financial supporters by tracking terrorist money flows and uncovering terrorist networks here and abroad, including through the use of the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program;

(2) finds that the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program has been conducted in accordance with all applicable laws, regulations, and Executive Orders, that appropriate safeguards and reviews have been instituted to protect individual civil liberties, and that Congress has been appropriately informed and consulted for the duration of the Program and will continue its oversight of the Program;

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When Republicans thought about how they could rein in federal spending, one idea was to curb how much federal largesse gets handed out to illegal aliens through fraudulent means. If you are appalled at the thought of denying government money to illegal aliens, money from hard-working taxpayers who play by the rules, then you might fit inside the newsroom at The Washington Post. Their front-page headline today: "Medicaid Rule Called A Threat To Millions."

Reporters Susan Levine and Mary Otto explained that a Medicaid rule takes effect Saturday that requires proof of citizenship before Medicaid recipients collect benefits, even if they have long benefited from Medicaid. The liberal sermonizing started in paragraph three, although there was not a single liberal label for any "advocate for the poor" anywhere in the piece. They're just "critics," not partisans or lobbyists:

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

As most of you will read this first thing in the morning, I not only suggest you not have a coffee cup near your computer, but also highly recommend that you remove all fragile objects from the room.

Yes, this is that hysterical, for Wednesday evening, comedian and faux-scientist Al Gore was Jon Stewart’s guest on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show.” In reality, this was the perfect venue for Dr. Gore to discuss his absurd ideas if you think about it, for as the subject was Gore’s new romantic comedy, “An Inconvenient Truth,” the yucks were aplenty.

As this was a long segment, I will highlight only a few of the finer moments, and then encourage you to watch the video (courtesy of Expose the Left) for the full effect, as this one doesn’t disappoint.