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It's fascinating how fast the roles have switched in the DNC Media's take on Ned Lamont. Today's front page in the WashPost printed the headline "Democratic Leadership Welcomes Lamont." Next to that, a promotional headline: "Will Lieberman Hurt or Help Democrats?" They're not asking whether Lamont as a Democratic poster boy will hurt or help Democrats. Overnight, Lieberman has gone from party stalwart to independent pariah in the wilderness. You might expect the Democrats to switch horses like they're changing socks like party politicians. But it ought to be more surprising that the "objective, mainstream media" follows suit (or sock) so slavishly.

The front-page article by Shailagh Murray and Dan Balz began typically by using "antiwar" as a stalking-horse adjective for liberal: "Democratic leaders embraced their new antiwar Senate nominee Ned Lamont on Wednesday, but his defeated rival, Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) vowed to wage an independent crusade to save his seat and prevent the party from being captured by forces he said are out of the political mainstream."

In an interview with the CBS News website Public Eye, CBS reporter Sharyn Alfonsi displayed a typically leftish enthusiasm for New York Times columnists and former Democratic presidents who pride themselves on being Southern charmers.

When asked about the last "really great movie or book you've found, Alfonsi mentioned a classic Southern novel and "Also, I just finished Thomas Friedman’s From Beirut to Jerusalem. I love him. He’s a great writer and a genius." When asked about the "most fascinating person," Alfonsi displayed her years in Arkansas journalism: "Most fascinating: I interviewed Bill Clinton a few times. He’s a study."

Brian Williams of "NBC Nightly News" surely intended to praise the heroism and selflessness of our various service people. But he employed at best an awkward, at worst an inappropriate and offensive manner of doing it.

On this evening's 7 PM ET edition of Hardball, Chris Matthews mused about the UK-born terrorists whose plot was foiled today:

"Here we have maybe 24 people who have lived in London and England and the free world for all these years that become citizens, subjects of the Crown, and, yet, after having gotten to know us, they want to kill themselves to hurt us. Isn't that an even deeper conundrum here than the chemicals being used in these attacks?"

Williams [appearing from London's Heathrow airport]: "And that, Chris, that last aspect, the willingness to take one's own life -- I always tell people there are guys on our team like that, too. They're called Army Rangers and Navy Seals and the Special Forces folks and the first responders on 9/11 who went into those buildings knowing, by the way, they weren't going to come out. So we have players like that on our team."

Video clip (57 seconds): Real (1.7 MB) or Windows Media (2 MB), plus MP3 audio (400 KB)

In a seeming shot at the Bush administration's priorities and competence, on Thursday's World News with Charles Gibson on ABC, Richard Clarke, the former counter-terrorism chief in the Clinton White House who left and then denounced the Bush White House, asserted the plot against airplanes uncovered in Britain shows al-Qaeda is still going after five years while the U.S. “eliminated” Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in four years.

Anchor Charles Gibson asked Clarke about how President Bush blamed “Islamic fascists,” but the leader of the plot “has links to al-Qaeda. So is this al-Qaeda?" Clarke, now an ABC News consultant, replied by proposing that “what today's plot reminds us is that five years after 9/11, the United States has not eliminated al-Qaeda. We eliminated Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in under four years, but five years into this war against al-Qaeda, they're out there still plotting major attacks against the United States." (Transcript of the exchange follows)

(h/t: MsUnderestimated.) Today on Neal Cavuto, the usual panel was on, including Ben Stein and Stuart Varney. The topic was whether or not the events of yesterday and today would have an impact on our economic outlook. Ben Stein talked about a nation “bound together by the silk and threads of airline travel,” and how when those threads are frayed, it will strain us. However, he opined that if we let that happen, the terrorists win. (brief video to follow from MsUnderestimated) Stuart Varney then talked about a recent poll of British Mulslims, and this even took my breath away!

Varney: I think that the British have to get used to the economic negative impact of having a large hostile and murderous minority living in their midst.

TVNewser broke the news that acting CNN political director Molly Levinson has been named the new political director at CBS News. But he did not note that she's newly married to Joshua Wachs, a recent executive of the Democratic National Committee, as The New York Times noted in its Weddings & Celebrations pages on July 9:

The bridegroom, 34, was until February 2005 the chief operating officer of the Democratic National Committee in Washington. This month he is to become the vice president for community relations for the National Basketball Association in New York. He graduated from Oberlin College.

Made-in-the-UK Islamic radicals are trying to murder people - and it's the UK's fault for not doing a better job integrating them into society.

That was the view expressed on Fox News this afternoon by Angela Corpe of Sky News - Fox's UK sister network. Fox's Page Hopkins asked: "Given that you had 7/7 and we in New York know what it was like after 9/11. [Is it] still very fresh in Londoners' minds that these were home-grown would-be terrorists?

Corpe: "It was a problem even before 7/7 happened last year. . . We are not facing foreign terrorists but people bred here in the UK. Something our politicians have been discussing today. Not only [must we] be more tolerant of the Muslim faith and realize these few do not speak for the Muslim faith. These people born here, brought up here, going to our schools and still feel the need to blow up planes to, to plot to explode buildings and tube stations.

Continued Corpe: "We have a real job to do here in the UK to try to reintegrate these people and find out where we are going wrong in helping these people realize that if they want to stay in this country they have to accept the freedoms we have here and respect human life in the same way we do."

With that kind of attitude, should Angela ever want to 'cross the pond' she should have no problem finding employment in our MSM.

Update: Demonstrating that the UK doesn't have a monopoly on journalists concerned not to trample Islamo-fascist sensitivities, Alison Stewart of MSNBC this afternoon referred to the 'alleged' plot to plant bombs on planes.  This is the same MSNBC that yesterday, on Tucker Carlson's show, decided to extend air time to a controlled-demolition nutjob arguing that the Bush administration was behind 9/11.

On this morning's Today, NBC's Kevin Corke wondered how long the administration knew about the averted bombing plot and why they would withhold that information, asking: "If the administration has known about this potential plot what was the hold up in getting the word out, especially domestically?" Either this is a case of the media being overly-skeptical or just being clueless. Clearly the administration wouldn't want to release any information before any arrests were made so as not to tip off any suspects in the U.S. or Britain. The following is the full exchange between NBC's Ann Curry and Corke.

Ann Curry: "And British Prime Minister Tony Blair briefed the President overnight about this plot. Well NBC's Kevin Corke is in Crawford, Texas at the President's ranch this morning. Kevin, good morning. Any word from the President?"

Quick Take: Reuters' initial reaction to the UK airliner bomb plot arrests was to tie it to Tony Blair and Israel's actions in Lebanon. A later story, perhaps in response to blog criticism of the original, added the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as "reasons." Nowhere is the idea that Islamic Jihadism, independent of day-to-day events in the Middle East, is involved. More important, and worse -- Articles containing speculation gone wild are allowed to go out disguised as "objective" news pieces.
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Here, from The Washington Post at 2:13 AM (article saved to my hard drive to guard against the "memory-hole effect) are three paragraphs from a Reuters story on the UK airliner bomb plot arrests (paras 9, 10, and 11):

Following the arrests, security at all British airports was increased and additional security measures put in place for all flights.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair has come under strong criticism at home and abroad for following the U.S. lead and refusing to call for an immediate ceasefire in the conflict between Israel and Lebanese Hizbollah guerrillas.

The security alert comes 13 months after four Islamist suicide bombers killed 52 people on London's transport network on July 7 last year.