Last September, after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita devastated the Gulf Coast, the media regularly warned of rising natural gas prices and exploding heating bills. Yet, when these same energy costs plummeted a year later – and utility companies announced large reductions in charges to consumers – the networks paid little attention to the news. 

On September 14, natural gas prices declined to their lowest point in two years. As reported by the Associated Press: “October natural gas futures fell 55.7 cents to settle at $4.892 per 1,000 cubic feet on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The last time front-month natural gas futures settled below $5 was Sept. 16, 2004.”

Well sports fans, the plot is still thickening. TVNewser reported on Monday that a fellow comedian has responded to Bill Maher’s “free speech” rant reported by NewsBusters here and here.

To refresh memories, Maher said on his Friday evening “Real Time” program “if CBS News doesn’t understand what free speech is, what am I supposed to expect of Fox News?” Deliciously, someone who has worked for both HBO and FNC had an answer for Maher:

"Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" premiered on NBC tonight, and it looks like more of the same old, same old. Judd Hirsch's character, in charge of the Saturday Night Live-like show flew into a snit when the network standards and practices exec forced him to pull a skit called "Crazy Christians".

In the latest of a series of "Special Comments" attacking members of the Bush administration, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann used his Monday Countdown show to make an over-the-top demand for an apology from President Bush for his recent comments that it was "unacceptable to think" the actions of America could be compared to those of terrorists. As recounted by NewsBusters on Friday, Olbermann took an awkwardly worded, off-the-cuff remark by Bush at his Friday press conference, which was more likely intended to mean that it was "ridiculous to claim" a comparison between America and terrorists, and blew it out of proportion as if the comment were an attack on the right to think, and therefore a grave threat to democracy.

On Monday Olbermann chastized Bush for his "unrestrained fury" which the MSNBC host compared to that of a "thwarted three-year-old" who "demonizes dissent." Olbermann fretted about Bush taking America on a "fearful path," and worried about "what will next be done" with Bush's critics in the future. Harkening back to Senators Barry Goldwater and Hugh Scott meeting with former President Richard Nixon to convince him to resign, Olbermann suggested that Republicans similarly need to convince Bush to apologize. (Transcript follows)

Video clip of last two-thirds of Olbermann's eight-minute diatribe (4:45): Real (3 MB at 100 kbps) or Windows Media (3.6 MB at 81 kbps), plus MP3 audio (1.6 MB)

Often, the warmth of media memories toward a politician hinge on where they stood, or where they ended up standing. In Monday's Washington Post, TV critic Tom Shales reviewed the HBO debut of the documentary "Goldwater on Goldwater," made by C.C. Goldwater, the granddaughter of the late Sen. Barry Goldwater, loaded with liberal experts who lauded his resistance to the religious right. Shales sermonized:

Goldwater, who died in 1998, was the man who defined conservatism for more than one generation and who essentially split with the conservative movement when it became allied with pseudo-religious extremists. To Goldwater, the essence of conservatism was that government should stay out of people's lives as much as possible, and he was "appalled," his granddaughter says, by the "social agenda" of the far-right-wingers who seek to control the Republican Party now.

Bill Press, the former CNN and MSNBC host refuses to yield ground on the Plame story. Starting to sound a lot like a crazy guy shouting about aliens, Press creates a unified conspiracy theory of Plame. That's a little difficult given recent news events, so Press has to resort to distorting the words of columnist Robert Novak:

So where's my apology to Karl Rove?

That's what many readers want to know: Having accused Karl Rove of leading a conspiracy within the Bush White House to reveal the identity of undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame, don't I owe Rove an apology now that former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage has admitted that he, not Rove, was Novak's primary source?

Well, here's my answer: Hell, no! Armitage's involvement doesn't disprove the Rove conspiracy. It only proves it was a lot wider than we originally thought. [...]

Several network stories have framed the violent reaction of some Muslims to Pope Benedict's quotation last week of how 14th century Byzantine Emperor Manuel Paleologos II said, “Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached,” not around demands that Muslim leaders denounce the uncivilized reaction, but around how the Pope had “provoked” the violence, “damaged” relations with Muslims and should have realized what his words would cause.

Brian Williams teased Monday's NBC Nightly News: "The Pope says he's sorry, but is his apology enough? Tonight, there's fresh outrage and new threats over his words about Islam." Reporter Richard Engel soon held the Pope accountable: “This Pope is seen as something of a hardliner who wants Europe to understand its Christian roots, to embrace them first...” Over on the CBS Evening News, Mark Phillips insisted that “an angry reaction among Muslim extremists might have been anticipated, but even moderates...say the Pope's words make their job much harder.” ABC anchor Charles Gibson contended: “Perhaps the surprise was that the Vatican was surprised that Muslims took offense.” David Wright's conclusion suggested both religions are equally responsible, when only one is committing violence: “Two of the world's great religions, a crucial test: Can they speak frankly without causing an uproar?” On Sunday night, anchor Dan Harris led with how “some Muslims say the Pope's apology doesn't go far enough.” ABC featured Professor Fawaz Gerges, who declared: “I think even though the Pope apologized today, I think it's gonna take years for the damage done to Christian-Muslim relations to be repaired.” (Transcripts follow)

Blame it on talk radio. That is what Washington Post reporter Michelle Boorstein accepts as the reason for an increase in the harassment of Muslims in the U.S. It has nothing to do with terrorist attacks or threats of violence against those like the Pope who dare question any aspect of Islam.

In a media ranking of all those who are capable of committing a sin, talk radio hosts are near the top, while Muslims are close to the bottom, between baby lambs and blind orphans.

Complaints of anti-Muslim harassment, violence and discriminatory treatment registered with a national Muslim civil rights group jumped 30 percent in 2005 from the previous year, the group said today in releasing its annual report .

The 1,972 complaints made to the Council on American-Islamic Relations are the most the group has received since it began the annual reports following anti-Muslim incidents after the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. The group said it actually received 2,300 reports but deemed some of them illegitimate.

Monday, on "Imus in the Morning" guest Jonathan Alter of Newsweek magazine claimed Vice President Cheney has a "toxic combination of arrogance and incompetence," leading Mr. Imus to compare the Vice President to...the BTK killer.

Alter continued his ongoing diatribe against the administration, implying that the administration is un-American for wanting defined rules of interrogation for terror suspects, rather than a broad statement banning anything that "offends the decency of mankind" that is open to broad interpretation and could lead to interrogators later being accused of war crimes. Alter framed the debate as a debate between "heroic" figures like Senators John McCain, John Warner, and Lindsey Graham who want to limit interrogation tactics to our "American values," and the "chicken hawks" in the administration who allegedly favor torture.

With the gun control movement running for the hills nationwide, opponents of the Second Amendment have taken comfort in the fact that many of America's largest cities remain solidly in the anti-gun camp. In such places, it's not uncommon for local government officials to initiate so-called gun buyback programs where police purchase weapons citizens bring in, no questions asked.

Basically no one who studies firearms policy believes these initiatives actually work to reduce crime or take guns away from criminals. Research by the DOJ and even Harvard University have discounted the effectiveness of buyback programs. Just a few months ago, the liberal Boston Phoenix alternative newspaper ran an article that contended they enable criminals to afford newer, more deadly weapons. Most of the time, the bulk of residents selling their guns are older, as are their firearms--not exactly the kind of people you'd see engaging in armed robbery.

All of this information can be easily found on the internet. Surely the District of Columbia, which hosted a buyback program over the weekend, was aware of it. One would hope that at least one person at the Associated Press or the Washington Post knew that gun buyback programs don't work, or that they'd at least have the journalistic inclination to look into how effective such initiatives are. But hard-hitting, thoughtful local reporting isn't exactly in high supply in America's newspapers today, to say nothing of research critical of liberal shibboleths.

On Monday’s "Good Morning America," anchor Diane Sawyer spoke with "Newsweek" managing editor Jon Meacham about the controversy over a centuries-old quote employed by Pope Benedict XVI in a speech on faith and reason.

Protests, violence and threats against the Vatican and representatives of the Catholic Church have erupted since the Pope’s speech, where he used a quote from a Byzantine emperor, Manuel II. The Pope has since clarified his remarks, saying that it is not his own view that the prophet Muhammad’s contribution to the world has been “things only evil and inhuman.”

Sawyer found the use the quote “baffling,” and wondered if the Pope’s decision to insert it into his speech was “an attempt at provocation” with Muslims. Meacham, for his part, found the Pope’s speech to be a “heavy-handed” and “clumsy” attempt at starting a dialogue with the Islamic community. Meacham then brought up Pope Benedict’s reputation among some as “God’s Rottweiler” as head of the Vatican office charged with enforcing of Catholic doctrine during the papacy of John Paul. (ABCNews.com carried a story with the headline "'God's Rottweiler's' First Crisis.")

On Monday’s “Early Show,” co-host Hannah Storm interviewed First Lady Laura Bush. Unlike Mrs. Bush’s interview on “Today,” Storm’s questions were much more supportive of the first lady, yet she still managed to sneak in a few questions regarding America’s image abroad and the first lady’s role in approving President Bush’s speeches.

Storm held off until her fourth question before delving into the issue of America’s reputation abroad:

"Daily Show" fake news anchor Jon Stewart appeared live over the weekend at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Maryland, just north of DC. Monday's Washington Post reported the crowd gleefully greeted the Bush and Cheney mockery:

Stewart was perhaps at his best when skewering both sides of the political aisle, at which point -- as the comic urged both sides to just "be reasonable!" -- the event felt like one big ideological love-in. And when the William and Mary grad quickly slid into his impersonations of Bush and Cheney (the latter evoking the "Batman" villain the Penguin), "Daily Show" die-hards -- like music concertgoers hearing the first few bars or beats of a song -- erupted with gleeful recognition.

Though it aired a week ago, the New York Times continues to show outsized sympathy for critics of ABC's miniseries "The Path to 9-11."

Edward Wyatt piles on with Monday's post-mortem, "A Show That Trumpeted History but Led to Confusion." The text box: "A mini-series on ABC attracts no sponsors, but much criticism." Criticism mainly from Clintonites and left-wing activists.

If you thought Al Gore would somehow go away after the 24/7 promotion of his lecture film "An Inconvenient Truth," you couldn't be more wrong. The failed presidential candidate is continuing to build his media empire with a follow-up book entitled "The Assault on Reason." He's going to use its commercial appeal to decide whether he should run for president or not, at least according to the Washington Post:

Although saying he has no plans to run for president in 2008, former vice president Al Gore has nonetheless left the door ever so slightly ajar. It's a good bet that door will swing open a good bit wider come next May.

That is when Gore is scheduled to publish his next book. With no fanfare, he signed a few weeks ago with Penguin Press to write "The Assault on Reason."

As described by editor Scott Moyers [any relation to Bill?], the book is a meditation on how "the public arena has grown more hostile to reason," and how solving problems such as global warming is impeded by a political culture with a pervasive "unwillingness to let facts drive decisions."

Meredith Vieira's question on Monday about Hillary Clinton decrying Bush's "Fear Factor presidency" seemed like a tired NBC-show plug to me. (What next? Vieira asking the First Lady, "An interrogation bill. Bush faces McCain. Deal Or No Deal?") So where did this Hillary Clinton quote originate? After a little Nexis searching, it's from an interview Sen. Clinton gave to the editorial board of the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle on January 19, 2005. (NewsMax had it at the time.) Does Vieira have an excellent memory? Or who pulled this old chestnut out?

Saying the Bush administration uses scare tactics rather than sound policy, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton expressed deep concerns about the president's second term on a visit to Rochester on Tuesday. "The fear factor has become the overriding strategic approach that this administration uses," Clinton told the Democrat and Chronicle editorial board.

Today's starter: Did the AP earn Pulitzers for collaborating with terrorists? Probably, argues Power Line.

Meredith Vieira used the occasion of Laura Bush's in-studio appearance on this morning's Today to pepper the First Lady with criticisms from Hillary Clinton and even Republicans. The First Lady was on to promote her global literacy initiative but, not surprisingly, she ended up having to defend against Today's attack line of the day. After a set-up piece from NBC's Kelly O'Donnell that noted: 'some of the biggest names within [the President's] own party....continue to resist some of his plans for how terror suspects are treated,' Vieira asked if the First Lady's global literacy initiative would help restore the nation's reputation, presumably, destroyed by the President's anti-terror policies:

First there was "Dowdification," named after the NYT columnist's deliberate truncation of a speech by President Bush to falsely imply he had said al Qaeda was "no longer a problem. Now, Patterico (aka Patrick Frey) suggests a new term, "Isikoffed" for the Newsweek reporter who similarly truncated a memo by Alberto Gonzales to make the Bush admin look like it considers all the Geneva Conventions to be "quaint" when it comes to the war on terrorism. Instead, Gonzales was making the sensible point that some of them, such as the requiring prison guards to provide inmates with scientific instruments and athletic clothes, are obsolete.

That the MSM has not sufficiently corrected the record on this point continues to be a problem since many liberals in and out of the blogosphere continue to believe this bit of misinformation.

Update 11:02. While you're over at Patterico's, be sure and read his post about how the LA Times is providing cover for a left-wing church leader who basically said voting for Republicans is a sin.

You wouldn't think that someone who wrote a book condemning all religions as dangerous hokum and who favors higher taxes, drug decriminalization and gay marriage would be in danger of becoming the right's favorite liberal. But in the wake of his LA Times column of today, Head-in-the-Sand Liberals, Sam Harris might be on the way to being celebrated by conservatives and castigated on the left.

The column's subtitle really tells the story: "Western civilization really is at risk from Muslim extremists," and Harris' essential point in that liberals refuse to recognize that fact.

The plot thickens. After Bill Maher claimed on the Friday evening installment of HBO’s “Real Time” that CBS prevented him from discussing religion on the “freeSpeech” segment as reported by NewsBusters, the executive producer of the “Evening News” has now denied this. As reported by TVNewswer (hat tip to reader Tracheostomy):

In an e-mail to TVNewser, CBS responds to Bill Maher:

"Bill Maher was never told that he couldn't discuss religion in a 'Free Speech' segment," Rome Hartman, executive producer of the CBS Evening News, said. "In fact, 'Free Speech' has already addressed religion and we expect others will in the future."

This obviously goes counter to Maher’s statements on Friday:

Cyrus Nowrasteh, the screenwriter behind ABC's "Path to 9/11" miniseries, has an op-ed in today's Wall Street Journal about his experience. Unsurprisingly, he has little good will for left-wing critics who tried to censor a film that portrayed Democrats in any kind of a bad light:

It would have been good to be able to report due diligence on the part of those who judged the film, the ones who held forth on it before watching a moment of it. Instead, in the rush to judgment, and the effort to portray the series as the work of a right-wing zealot, much was made of my "friendship" with Rush Limbaugh (a connection limited to two social encounters), but nothing of any acquaintance with well-known names on the other side of the political spectrum. No reference to Abby Mann, for instance, with whom I worked on "10,000 Black Men Named George" (whose hero is an African-American communist) or Oliver Stone, producer of "The Day Reagan Was Shot," a film I wrote and directed. Clearly, those enraged that a film would criticize the Clinton administration's antiterrorism policies--though critical of its successor as well--were willing to embrace only one scenario: The writer was a conservative hatchetman.