The second annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative in New York drew the A-list of network news stars to add celebrity glitz to the proceedings. The list of "featured attendees" from the media elite included (in alphabetical order) CNN's Christiane Amanpour, Tom Brokaw, Katie Couric, Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, CNN's Sanjay Gupta, former PBS anchor Charlayne Hunter-Gault, NPR "All Things Considered" anchor Michele Norris, Diane Sawyer, George Stephanopoulos (of course), CNN anchor Zain Verjee, Judy Woodruff (now with PBS again), and Fareed Zakaria of Newsweek. Most of the personalities on this list were panel discussion moderators -- with the exception of Amanpour, Couric, and Sawyer. Some were repeats from last year. (Couric plugged it online here.)

Vern Buchanan Rally With Sen. Mel Martinez...

SARASOTA, FL. (NS) -

I had the honor and privilege of attending the Rally held today at Dolphin Aviation off N. Tamiami Trail in Sarasota...

The crowd I estimated at about 150 had gathered to hear Sen. Mel Martinez address them in a 'Unity Rally' for supporters of local businessman, turned 13th Congressional District candidate, Vern Buchanan...

Before the meeting the VFW met with Candidate Buchanan, along with members of several Veterans groups, to endorse him for Congress in the 13th Florida Congressional District. Lt. Col. Lee Kichen, U.S. Army Ret., read the endorsement from the VFW with Sen. Mel Martinez also in the room. I am honored to say I was also in the room with my Firefighter Veteran friend Jim Costa, Fire Medic, Sarasota County Fire Department...

The San Francisco Chronicle has finally found a "hate crime" it can write about.

No, it isn't the hate crime of self-proclaimed terrorist, Omeed Aziz Popal, who drove his SUV into pedestrians throughout San Francisco, killing one, paralyzing another, and injuring many... no not that story. Why Omeed was just a poor, sick-in-the-head fellow, not an Islamist terrorist despite that he claimed to be to all who would listen to him.

I have looked at quite a few San Francisco Chronicle articles, and none of them have used the words "hate crime" in connection with the Aziz Popal story. (Here is a typical oneFamily cites history of mental problems, where the Chronicle never seems to get around to accusing hate crimes, but does feel sorry for the perpetrator)

With Iraq making the network news every night, regularly as the lead story, most people would assume that there are scores of intrepid  journalists embedded with the troops, reporting from the front lines of the War on Terror.

Most people would be wrong.

Associated Press chief executiveTom Curley writes a laughable defense of Bilal Hussein, the AP photographer being held by military authorities in Iraq after being nabbed with an alleged al Qaeda operative and an arms cache. The rigor of this column is indicated thus:

Bilal Hussein, an Iraqi photographer who helped the Associated Press
win a Pulitzer Prize last year, is now in his sixth month in a U.S.
Army prison in Iraq. He doesn't understand why he's there, and neither
do his AP colleagues.

This from one of the pinnacles of American journalism. Curley then adds that the The Army says it thinks Bilal has too many contacts among insurgents. Oh that's an honest assessement. Eventually he manages to discover a sliver of the information that seconds ago he was wholly ignorant of:

He has taken pictures the Army thinks could have been made only with
the connivance of insurgents. So Bilal himself must be one, too, or at
least a sympathizer.

But if you rely only on this Op-Ed, or publications including the Washington Post, you'd never know about Hussein's allged al Qaeda connection and the little matter of being nabbed alongside an arms cache. Neither this Op-Ed nor this squib in the Post on Sept. 18 say anything about the circumstances surrounding his capture.

What’s politically toxic in Campaign 2006? On the CBS Evening News Friday night, Katie Couric covered the U.S. Senate race in New Jersey, and the danger was apparently a Republican standing anywhere near Team Bush. Couric pressed Republican candidate Tom Kean Jr. about President Bush: "Would you like him to come?" The second time she asked, she giggled. She weirdly compared the Kean family to the fictional mob family in The Sopranos. (Would she ever do that to the Kennedys?)

Couric ever-so-barely revealed "scandal has wracked the Democratic Party here," but gave no specifics. Newly appointed Sen. Bob Menendez is facing a federal probe for renting out his property to a community group, and then securing millions in federal grants for that community group. At the very least, liberal groups the networks often use as expert sources, like Public Citizen and the Center for Public Integrity, say Menendez is guilty of a conflict of interest. But CBS viewers would have no idea. They just heard Menendez say it’s "smear tactics to hide a right-wing agenda."

As Brad Wilmouth reported, former president Bill Clinton will be appearing on “Fox News Sunday” September 24 in a pre-recorded segment. In it, he becomes quite defensive with host Chris Wallace, makes some seemingly negative suggestions about Fox News, and, in un-Clintonlike fashion, loses his cool. For those interested, here is a video of a brief clip of this interview showing a very testy former president (hat tip to Drudge). Update 2:  More complete video link here with the second half here, both courtesy of our dear friend at Ms Underestimated.

What follows is a rough transcript of the interview to be aired in its entirety on Sunday:

For over a century, the Statue of Liberty stood in New York Harbor proudly extolling American values to the world, even doing so defiantly in the face of those finding this country an affront to their despotic aspirations and morays. However, as factions within the government conspire to use the war on terror as a smokescreen behind which to continue the transformation of the American people into docile minions of conformity, it seems Lady Liberty no longer stands quite so bravely because her caretakers compel her to cower before the forces of evil from both within and without this great nation.

Since the 9/11 attacks in 2001, access to the statue has been curtailed and severely limited. The interior of the landmark was closed for nearly three years following the terrorist incident. And as with other aspects of American life, from that day forward the tragedy was invoked as an excuse one could not question without having one’s patriotism assailed to keep the upper reaches of the statue off limits in perpetuity.

Could this possibly be true?

Via WND, I find in the early hours of this morning that a French daily newspaper L'Est Republicain has published that the al-Qaeda leader Osama bin-Laden died within days of contracting typhoid fever in Pakistan.

"According to a commonly reliable source, the Saudi police believe that Osama Bin Laden has died," said a Sept. 21 confidential note transmitted by the Directorate-General of External Services.

According to the note to be published by the L'Est Republicain, the Saudi police "would try to obtain more details, in particular the location of the burial site, and then announce the news officially." The DGSE specified in the note that no "jihadist Internet site has for the moment been made aware of the death of Osama bin Laden."

According to the note, "the head of al-Qaida may have fallen victim to a strong case of typhoid fever while in Pakistan, on August 23, 2006," and may have died within a matter of days.

Developing....

Catch up with extensive updates below:

Assessing the anti-U.S. rants at the UN from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, on Friday night's Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO, Maher and actor Bradley Whitford contended President Bush's policies have legitimized the criticism of an arrogant U.S. abusing its power. Maher proposed: “Even though these guys are bad in a lot of ways, it is also true that the substance of what they said -- that the U.S. is a bully, that we want to rule the world with threats and bombs, that we're imperialistic -- what I thought was, you know, this is a speech I've heard over the years many times by tin horn dictators at the UN against the U.S. It's just that now it strikes a lot of people as true.” Whitford, formerly part of the cast of The West Wing, and now a star on NBC's new Monday night drama, Studio 60: On the Sunset Strip, charged that “lie after lie after lie” from the administration has caused “an inappropriate over-reaction” to terrorism “so that these idiots, these crackpots seem to be justified” in their criticisms.

On Friday's Countdown, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann featured an interview with former President Clinton, during which he invited Clinton to attack President Bush, while not challenging the former President. Olbermann again brought up Bush's awkwardly worded statement that it was "unacceptable to think" that the actions of America are similar to those of terrorists, a statement which Olbermann had previously made the subject of two "Special Comment" anti-Bush attacks on his show. Clinton came to Olbermann's defense admitting "I'm more close to where you are," contending that "it's wrong for you to be portrayed as not patriotic." Olbermann also wondered if the "demonizing" of dissent was causing America to "get closer to what the terrorists want for us to change anyway." Olbermann ended on an anti-Fox News note attacking the network for trying to "reprehensively sandbag" Clinton in his interview with Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace: "And our compliments to President Clinton for having today staved off a reprehensible sandbagging by Chris Wallace of what is jokingly referred to as Fox News." (Transcript follows)