Well, our wonderful president and his cronnies are at it again. They are implementing a 'North American Union' with Canada and Mexico. It's nice to know we will never be known as American's again, but rather 'North Americans."

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueAdeZuns3A&search=american%20union

http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=14965

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/june2006/210606cfrplan.htm

Disgraced former CBS anchorman Dan Rather resurfaced Wednesday night on CNN, where he was a guest on "Anderson Cooper 360." Cooper didn't apologize for calling dibs on some of Rather's "60 Minutes" real estate, but maybe the air time was a bit of a thank-you card. The first thing a viewer might notice is that Cooper let Rather speak for large chunks of time, more hesitant to jump in than....a horned frog crossing the highway, to speak in Ratherisms. Michelle Humphrey said it seemed like he was being indulgent because it was Grandpa's story time. Notice how long Rather is allowed for his answers about how North Korea's tight control can "eat on your mind."

There isn't really any outrageous liberal bias here in the exchange, unless you count any attempt to rehabilitate the man who ruined his career to make the less than earth-shattering charge that President Bush missed a National Guard flight physical in Alabama. A look at the transcript:

In the first sentence, Mark Stevenson of the Associated Press says the liberal candidate for Mexican president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, is used to being cheated out of elections. Since the conservative candidate, Felipe Calderon, has been announced the winner, liberals/the media have a ready fallback position, the same used against Bush: "He stole the election."

The role of a man cheated out of an election comes naturally to Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

In 1994, after narrowly losing the Tabasco governor's race to Roberto Madrazo, he called on his supporters and governed from the streets, undermining Madrazo's already fragile administration.

David Remnick, the editor of the New Yorker and a Washington Post reporter from the early 1980s until the early '90s, has written a commentary for his magazine's July 10 issue in which he asserts that the Bush administration's criticism of stories such as Dana Priest's secret-prisons piece in the Washington Post and the New York Times' recent terror-finance-tracking story is insincere and politically calculated. Excerpts (emphasis added):

...More than any other White House in history, Bush’s has tried to starve, mock, weaken, bypass, devalue, intimidate, and deceive the press, using tactics far more toxic than any prose devised in the name of Spiro Agnew.

Bill Keller, editor of The New York Times, was on the PBS "NewsHour" last night to discuss the fallout over the fact that on June 23, The New York Times among other papers, revealed classified anti terrorism programs. Mr. Keller attempted to downplay the revelation as not a big deal because:

"We weighed very heavily and looked in excruciating detail at claims that this was not something that terrorists knew, that this would somehow be useful to terrorists. And the fact is, you know, you can find more useful detail about what the Treasury is doing in the Treasury's own public briefings."

If there is more useful detail on the public record, then why didn’t the Times print that instead? How does the Times know that the terrorists were already aware of the SWIFT program they wrote about? Did they talk to any terrorists to find out? The fact is, as Bill Keller goes on to mention:

CBS "Early Show" host Harry Smith performed two interview segments on North Korea's failed missile test. While he showed noticeable restraint from the usual isn't-Bush-bumbling line of questioning, even showing concern at America's adversary here -- asking Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns "Is Kim Jong Il just nuts?" -- he didn't press former Clinton diplomat Bill Richardson on the Clinton administration's policy of appeasement and arms-control agreements that the North Koreans egregiously violated.

The Burns interview came first. In addition to the "just nuts" question (Burns demurred diplomatically, "let's just say he's unpredictable"), Smith asked: "The Chinese as recently as last week were reaching out to the North Koreans, saying please don't do this. They seem to do whatever they want. How do you deal with a country that is so willful and disregards the pleas of even its friends in the neighborhood?"

Editors of the New York Times, along with their allies in journalism, are defending the publication of anti-terrorism programs by declaring their actions to be in the “public interest,” making them a watchdog against what they view as excessive government power and secrecy. But the tables need to be turned. What about excessive media power and secrecy?

There’s something bizarre about the Times rushing out to protest excessive secrecy in the Bush administration – and then touting the testimony of secret sources as its evidence.

The following is an op-ed of mine first published by The American Thinker.

Did you hear that sound on Thursday, June 29? That was millions of conservatives gasping in horror when the Supreme Court issued its Hamdan v. Rumsfeld decision seemingly giving the Bush administration a stunning defeat over terrorist detention centers at Guantanamo Bay.

Irrespective of such justifiable concerns, when combined with another leak by the New York Times of a counterterrorism program just six days prior, Republicans were actually handed a tremendous gift dramatically improving their chances to hold both chambers of Congress in the November elections.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has been waging a one-man battle against Canada's newspapers, knowing that regardless of what he tells them during press conferences, they'll spin his words into their own liberal prism and diminish any of his efforts to make a case.

Guy Giorno was the chief of staff when conservative Michael Harris was Ontario premier (Harris resigned in 2002). He has engaged in his own fight with the Toronto Star, and won.

Reports Western Standard:

Guy Giorno doesn't have a problem with bias in Canada's press--though he sympathizes with Prime Minister Stephen Harper's claims that some reporters are anti-conservative (Harper, who's locked in a public battle with the press gallery, has said some reporters have it in for his government).

But Giorno does have a problem with ideology getting in the way of reporting the truth. "While [some people] can see through bias, an uninformed reader doesn't know what is true and what is not," says the former chief of staff to former Ontario premier Mike Harris. "The real problem for conservatives is not left-wing bias, but actual untruths when reporting on conservatives and conservative causes." And Giorno's done more than gripe about it. He's taken Canada's largest newspaper before the Ontario Press Council with charges of printing untruths--twice. And won.

TomPaine.com goes to anti-Bush author David Corn for an article called "The Timid Times." In it, he claims the New York Times isn't really anti-Bush, and could be much harder on the President. He is progressively wrong on nearly every point he makes.

The Times and other papers occasionally publish graphic photos of wounded and dead Iraqis, but not enough to represent accurately and fully the daily tragedies occurring in Iraq... Everyday there are bodies—often headless bodies bearing signs of torture and mutilation. The paper generally does not put photographs of such atrocities in front of its readers. But imagine if it did, with regularly placed detailed photos of civilian casualties in Iraq on the front page. White House officials and others, no doubt, would complain about the demoralizing impact on U.S. public opinion regarding the war in Iraq.

I'm sure Mr. Corn isn't suggesting that U.S. soldiers decapitate, torture and mutilate civilians, is he? I actually agree with Mr. Corn on this issue, show Americans what terrorists do to innocent civilians. The reason the New York Times won't do it is two-fold; readers will quit buying the gory paper and it would actually solidify support against the heinous terrorists...

Brian Maloney (The Radio Equalizer) has identified something interesting at Amazon.com: “Is liberal Air America host Sam Seder's new book inadvertently encouraging readers to join the conservative cause?”

He continued: “In what is either a strange error, an Amazon.com staffer with a real sense of humor, or a bona fide trend, Air America host Sam Seder's new book FUBAR: America's Right-Wing Nightmare seems to be encouraging buyers to purchase Ann Coulter's Godless instead!”

For those not familiar with how Amazon works, when you go to the site and enter a book title, a page comes up that describes the book, gives some reader reviews, offers other books of typically similar content or style that readers might also enjoy, and then documents what people have actually purchased after looking at such titles. In the case of the F.U.B.A.R. page, these numbers are currently (at 10:50 AM ET, July 6):

What do customers ultimately buy after viewing items like this?

90% buy Godless: The Church of Liberalism by Ann Coulter $15.65

8% buy the item featured on this page: F.U.B.A.R. : America's Right-Wing Nightmare by Sam Seder $15.57

Hmmm. So, eleven times as many people “after viewing items like this” opt for Coulter’s “Godless”? Maloney tried to explain this seeming paradox:

If you're not acquanted with a DVR, it's a machine that lets you record your favorite shows when you're not able to watch them live. It's like a VCR but with many more hours of storing capacity, all recorded digitally on its own hard drive.

While it's still in its infancy (owned by 10 percent of consumers), an executive for ABC television wants all DVR manufacturers to disable one of the machine's most prized functions: fast-forwarding the commercials.

Reports Media News Daily:

ABC HAS HELD DISCUSSIONS ON the use of technology that would disable the fast-forward button on DVRs, according to ABC President of Advertising Sales Mike Shaw, with the primary goal to allow TV commercials to run as intended.

Thanks to Cori Dauber at Ranting Profs , we know that Times intelligence reporter Eric Lichtblau, notorious for co-writing the article revealing the terrorist surveillance program of international banking transactions known as SWIFT, wrote an article last November critical of the administration for -- get this -- lacking a strategy to cut off terrorist funding. From November 29, 2005 (Times Select or $ required): “U.S. Lacks Strategy to Curb Terror Funds, Agency Says.” An excerpt:

You're the boss at the New York Times. The warden at the jail holding celebrity snoop Anthony Pellicano issued an order barring anyone other than family and lawyers from seeing him. Getting a scoop with Pellicano will certainly boost newstainment sales.

Do you:
A. Respect the order and write stories without talking to Pellicano.
B. Appeal to a judge to lift the order.
C. Send in a "reporter" with a 20 year old law degree and California State Bar credential card who may or may not have filled out a form stating "Purpose of the visit: legal" which forces Pellicano out of his cell and into "outrage."

If you answered C, you could be New York Times management.

To those of us who see the Castro regime as an ugly dictatorship whose people are mired in poverty due to the communism it has imposed, little is more annoying than to hear the MSM tout the glories, as reported here by MRC, of Cuba's 'free health care,' and low illiteracy and infant mortality rates. Beyond the dubiousness of the statistics cited, are the media suggesting that trading freedom for a bowl of government porridge is a good deal?

In any case, judging by this morning's Today show, it looks as if the MSM have finally found a communist dictatorship they will not extol. The media have drawn the line at, well, the DMZ line separating South from North Korea.

Ken Lay deserves outrage for his corrupt tenure at Enron, but it's fair to say there is more outrage on the left, as liberals tried desperately to connect Enron to Bush in the 2002 election cycle. In the Washington Post today, in a piece titled "Ken Lay's Last Evasion,"  Style section essayist Henry Allen channeled the rage that Lay cheated the world by dying with an overwrought revenge fantasy:

But now that he's died of a heart attack in the luxury of his Colorado getaway while awaiting sentencing for his crimes, none of his victims will be able to contemplate that he's locked away in a place that makes the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel look like Hawaii; that he might be spending long nights locked in a cell with a panting tattooed monster named Sumo, a man of strange and constant demands; and long days in the prison laundry or jute mill or license plate factory, gibbering with anguish as fire-eyed psychopaths stare at him for unblinking hours while they sharpen spoons into jailhouse stilettos.

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