The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a prominent organization that has been combatting anti-Semitism and bigotry for 90 years, has issued a letter to MSNBC Countdown host Keith Olbermann. The letter, dated July 28, 2006, takes serious issue with Olbermann's repeated use of the Nazi salute while badgering Bill O'Reilly. The body of ADL's letter begins as follows:

We are deeply dismayed by your ongoing use of the Nazi "Sieg Heil" salute, both on your program and in public appearances -- including the recent Television Critics Association press tour -- while holding up a mask of Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly.

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Twice on Tuesday, CBS News correspondent Trish Regan labeled as “infamous” the embrace, derided as “The Kiss” by supporters of Connecticut Senate hopeful Ned Lamont, between President George W. Bush and incumbent Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman in the well of the House after Bush's 2005 State of the Union address. Regan didn't attribute the characterization to Lieberman's opponents. She stated it as fact. On the Early Show she explained over brief video of the event: "Ned Lamont has used this now infamous kiss to his advantage on campaign buttons and television ads, suggesting Lieberman is just too cozy with the President." Then on the CBS Evening News, Regan asserted over the same video: “His campaign has used images like this now infamous kiss." (Picture of "The Kiss" follows)

Today's Los Angeles Times includes an extended obituary on Dorothy Healey, described as "a onetime labor organizer, civil rights activist and Marxist radio commentator." The newspaper found nothing but praise for the old comrade. According to an acquaintance: "She was always so fiercely partisan for working people. Yes, of course, she cared about war and peace and women's issues, but she was always concerned about working people."

A college historian credits her union activism with leading "her to become an advocate of black and Chicano rights at a time when few other people were speaking out on such issues."

Here's an excerpt from an excellent editorial by Gary Witzenburg, a former auto engineer who helped design the GM EV1, the early '90s electric car that left-wing conspiracy theorists think the big ol' meanies at Big Oil killed. Suffice it to say, Witzenburg was nowhere to be found on the taxpayer-funded infomercial for "Who Killed the Electric Car" on the June 9 edition of "Now with David Brancaccio."

Here's an excerpt of his August 8 "Another View" editorial in "USA Today":

Widespread acceptance of battery-powered EVs will not happen until someone develops battery technology competitive with a tank of gas (or diesel) in every way. It must be absolutely safe, long-term durable, capable of operating reliably in extreme weather and temperatures, mass-producible at low cost, able to carry comparable energy in a package of comparable size and weight, and able to be quickly recharged. None comes remotely close.

Imagine if Rush Limbaugh had said it . . .

'Rome is Burning' is ESPN's edgy sports-commentary show starring the eponymous Jim Rome. Jason Whitlock is standing in for Rome this week, and while I don't know much about him, from what I've seen I enjoy his shtick. He's smart, funny and seems to successfully walk the fine line of expressing strong views without being malicious.

Another plus: his physique and bearing remind me of one of my all-time favorite movie characters in my all-time favorite movie - Sydney Greenstreet as Signor Ferrari in Casablanca. Judge for yourself.

In any case, in the show's opening monologue, the host riffs on what 'he's burning about.' Among Whitlock's topics today was what he suggests be the top priority for about-to-be-announced new NFL Commisioner. For Whitlock, job #1 is

"Fixing the league's officiating crisis. The new commissioner shouldn't bury his head in the sand and pretend everything is OK with the zebras. It's not. The new millenium NFL player is souped up on supplements and moves at the speed of sound. It's ridiculous to have 50 year-old white guys chasing after 25-yr old black guys."

A Pew Research Center for the People and the Press survey released today discovered, by “by a margin of 50 percent to 34 percent, Americans think that news organizations have hurt rather than helped the interests of the American people” with “news reports that the government has been secretly examining the bank records of American citizens who may have ties to terrorist groups.” However, “an even larger 65 percent to 28 percent majority believes that these news accounts told citizens something that they should know about.”

Republicans are much more upset with the media than Democrats, the poll, conducted July 6-19, found: “While nearly seven in ten Republicans (69 percent) believe the press reports have hurt the interests of the American people,” with a piddling 17 percent of Republicans contending it helped, “relatively few Democrats agree (38 percent). Instead, a 46 percent plurality of Democrats regards the press reporting as beneficial to the public's interest.”

Today is primary day in Connecticut, one in which liberals on the fringe left hope will be Senator Joe Lieberman’s day of reckoning. On Tuesday’s "Early Show" on CBS, correspondent Trish Regan previewed this race, and provided her insight on how Joe Lieberman has fallen from three term incumbent and former Democratic vice Presidential Candidate to now underdog in this race:

Trish Regan: "Ned Lamont has used this now infamous kiss to his advantage on campaign buttons and television ads, suggesting Lieberman is just too cozy with the president."

Infamous is a strong word. Perhaps Lieberman being embraced by President Bush at the 2005 State of the Union Address may be infamous to the far left, but I highly doubt mainstream America views two former rivals of differing political parties hugging as an infamous act.

Talk about striking for pure emotion with headlines! The AP has proclaimed that an "Israeli Strike Kills 13 Near Mourners". But, what does "near mourners" mean? Did Israel strike a funeral procession or not.

Apparently NOT.

AP begins their report giving the reader the feeling that Israel attacked a funeral procession with the following:

"Mourners in a funeral procession for Israeli airstrike victims scattered in panic Tuesday as warplanes again unleashed missiles that hit buildings and killed 13 people, witnesses and officials said."

Yet their very next paragraph proves that the strike was not only NOT upon that funeral procession, but came five minutes after the procession passed the scene of the attack.

Despite lots of promotion from the entertainment media, the Dixie Chicks seem to have offended their fan base too much. The lefty group has been forced to cancel shows in 14 states, replacing them with Canadian ones, the AP reports:

Several concerts on the Dixie Chicks'"Accidents & Accusations" tour have been canceled after slow ticket sales, but the group says it has replaced them with other dates.

Kansas City, Houston, St. Louis, Memphis and Knoxville are among 14 cities no longer on the original schedule released in May, according to a revised itinerary posted Thursday on the Dixie Chick's Web site.

It's unquestionable that something bad happened in Qana, Lebanon recently. Was it a massacre of innocent civilians, collateral damage, or a Hezbollah set-up?

It's starting to seem as though it was a combination of all three. The Washington Post's Jefferson Morley, Aziz P, and Ace are some of the bloggers beginning to raise this point. I've excerpted some of their arguments below. If you see any counter-arguments, post them as a comment or email them to me so I can include all sides.

UPDATE 14:25. Dan Riehl theorizes on how Hezbollah might have staged the casualties. Read on past the jump for an excerpt.

UPDATE 14:48. Power Line argues further that Arab stringers for MSM organizations are staging photos.

UPDATE 15:17. Ace has more possibly staged pix, including a mannequin improbably standing upright sporting a wedding dress.

As more and more states recognize the basic right to defend yourself NBC’s Today, not surprisingly, took a dim view. On this morning’s Today, Ron Mott in a segment headlined by the graphic: "License To Kill, Self-Defense Gone Too Far," Mott slanted his story with alarmist rhetoric and unbalanced talking heads.

Matt Lauer introduced the story: "Now a debate. How far can you go in the name of self-defense? In a growing number of states people have much more leeway to use deadly force. Supporters say that's a good thing but critics argue it's a case of shoot first and ask questions later. We have more on this now from NBC's Ron Mott."

Martin Peretz wrote an excellent editorial Monday noting that Connecticut's would-be Senator Ned Lamont is Karl Rove's dream Democrat: shallow to the extreme, a one-trick pony candidate who displays all the depth of a rainpuddle when it comes to the situations in places like Iraq and Iran.

All of that is quite true of course. But Peretz left out the most important fact about Ned Lamont: he's nothing but the lapdog of the most hateful, unhinged fringe leftists in the blogosphere, like Jane Hamsher and Markos Moulitsas Zúniga.

Mark Finkelstein notes that Markos Moulitsas Zúniga is strangely coy about his close personal friendship and tireless promotion of his lapdog Ned Lamont. Why might that be? Hmm, let me think: could it be that if he acknowledged the relationship openly, Ned Lamont might have to answer for so many of the vicious, hateful, and just plain lunatic fringe stuff that appears regularly on his blogger-buddy web sites?

NewsBusters contributor Jack Engelhard incorrectly thought he received an email from CNN anchor Jim Clancy. This did not occur. NewsBusters retracts this story and apologizes to CNN and to Jim Clancy for this false assertion.

A week after a Pew Research Center for the People and the Press survey determined that a much higher percentage of Democrats than Republicans prefer to get their news from the broadcast networks, CNN, MSNBC and NPR, a new Gallup Poll released today provides additional evidence that Democrats look more favorably upon the "mainstream media" as Gallup showed how “Democrats are more favorable than Republicans in their views” of eleven of 17 news personalities respondents were asked to assess. Dan Rather had the greatest net difference -- 38 percent -- with 86 percent of Democrats viewing him favorably, compared to just 48 percent of Republicans. Only two of the 17 news personalities (Bill O'Reilly and Geraldo Rivera) got more favorable evaluations from Republicans than Democrats. (Hat tip to Romenesko)

Others with a significant Democratic versus Republican approval gap include the incoming CBS Evening News anchor and the new co-host of NBC's Today: 17 points for Katie Couric (68% vs. 51%) and 15 points for Meredith Vieira (45% vs. 30%). Some others: Anderson Cooper (49% vs. 36%); Matt Lauer (65% vs. 53%), Barbara Walters (71% vs. 59%), Diane Sawyer (86% vs. 74%), Larry King (62% vs. 53%) and Bob Schieffer (54% vs. 47%).

On the one year anniversary of the death of Peter Jennings, the August 7 "World News with Charles Gibson" turned to medical editor Timothy Johnson for advice on how to quit smoking.

After listing some advice for what individuals can do, Johnson turned to a prescription for big government:

At the government level there are three proven techniques. One is to raise prices by increasing taxes, the second is to limit access by minors, and the third is to conduct mass media campaigns.

Of course there are plenty of critics who say those policies are utter failures, but Gibson did not seek a second opinion.

Here's what he might have found if he had:

Remember when Cokie Roberts said on Sunday’s “This Week” on ABC that a Ned Lamont victory in Connecticut would be a “Disaster for the Democratic Party” not once, but twice as reported by NewsBusters here? Well, on Monday, in an interview on NPR with Steve Inskeep (audio link here, hat tip to American Thinker), she reversed her position -- or what many conservatives like to refer to as a “flip-flop” -- and said that this “is going to be hard for all incumbents, but it's especially hard for the party in power.”

That would be the Republicans, wouldn’t it? Inskeep, maybe aware of what Roberts said on Sunday, then asked:

Friday night's edition of "Now" with David Brancaccio on PBS followed the old Bill Moyers formula of two leftists having an echo-chamber conversation. Brancaccio and Berkeley journalism dean Orville Schell agreed and agreed about how the press aren't liberal enough, the people don't want another Watergate/Vietnam era enough, and the free market can't be counted on to provide "independent" (read: thoroughly ultraliberal) journalism. "We're all [a] slave to the market," Brancaccio suggested.

Since Schell was a China scholar, Brancaccio even suggested the current administration might be inspired in their devotion to squelching the press by the Chinese communists. "I'm not sure I want to give government ideas on this particular point, but maybe our government could look to China, which has really raised this notion of, of censorship of their news media to almost a scientific level."

Bring back Katie! OK, perhaps that's not the solution, but the sycophantish display that Ann Curry put on for Queen Noor and her anti-Israel/pro-Hezbollah views was enough to make you pound the TV screen in frustration.

Noor is a Princeton-educated Arab-American who is the widow of the late King Hussein of Jordan. Curry's opening set the tone. Rather than asking a probing question, Ann invited Noor to lecture America: "what insights might you offer America about what Hezbollah wants and what it's willing to do to get it?"

Noor blamed the Jews and lauded Hezbollah: "Hezbollah was created as was Hamas in the Palestinian territories during a period of Israeli occupation which is on-going in the Palestinian territories and in Lebanon. Hezbollah was largely responsible and credited by the Lebanese for having creating the pressure for having Israel withdraw from Lebanese territory."

Curry took Noor's notion a grotesque step further: "So it's almost seen as a savior."

On the August 7 CBS Evening News, while filing a story about stem cell research on mice aimed at some day treating deafness in humans, correspondent Elizabeth Kaledin curiously implied that mouse embryos are not living, perhaps betraying a bias in how she views embryos in general. As she described research by Stanford University scientist Dr. Stefan Heller in which he injects stem cells into the ears of "mouse embryos," Kaledin informed viewers he plans to later try injecting stem cells into fully developed mice, which she referred to as "live mice," as if embryos were not technically alive. Kaledin: "He and his colleagues have figured out how to inject stem cells into the ears of mouse embryos and watch them grow. Their next step is to try it in live mice."

MSNBC's Keith Olbermann opened his August 7 Countdown show fretting about President Bush's unwillingness to delay his vacation, in contrast with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, during the current fighting in the Middle East, mocking Bush during the teaser by twice uttering the words: "He's on vacation." He even drew a negative parallel from history as he recounted that the Nazi invasion of Europe received a boost while infamous British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain vacationed, as the Countdown host then similarly uttered the words, "Chamberlain was on vacation," to link him to Bush. Olbermann, who has never compared the appeasement-minded Chamberlain to anti-war liberals, then further contrasted Bush with current Prime Minister Blair's decision to cancel his own vacation: "His close ally, Tony Blair, avoided the direct Chamberlain comparison and cancelled his own time off because of the events in the Middle East." Referring to Condoleezza Rice's handling of Middle East negotiations, Olbermann contended that she was "picking up the pieces of the President's foreign policy." (Transcript follows)

The following certainly qualifies as one of the most absurd statements that I’ve heard from a member of the media lately, and as someone that often spends 18 hours a day watching and reading press reports, that’s saying something (hat tip to Hot Air with video available here).

On Sunday’s “Reliable Sources” on CNN, the Washington Post’s Thomas Ricks actually stated with a straight face that Israel is intentionally not destroying all of Hezbollah’s rockets so that some can continue to rain down on Israel killing innocent civilians. This, in Ricks’ view, “helps you with the moral high ground problem, because you know your operations in Lebanon are going to be killing civilians as well.” I kid you not.

Host Howard Kurtz was rather shocked by Ricks’ assertion, and responded almost incredulously: