I don't want to sound heartless towards the many victims of the California wildfires, but this L.A. Times piece is just a sob story shilling for illegal alien sympathy!

Flames were only one worry for some illegal immigrants in the fire zone. Equally scary were the crowded roads and evacuation centers, heavy with law enforcement officers, including U.S. Border Patrol agents.

Some wondered if they would be deported if they went to shelters.

It gets even better. The ACLU is really trying to pull at the liberal heart-strings with ridiculous statements like this one:

Immigrant rights groups and the American Civil Liberties Union, however, claim that authorities have created a climate of intimidation through neglect and such policies as asking for identification at some shelters.

Keith Olbermann’s voice-over work on the Sunday night NFL roundup on NBC can contain an occasional shock. (Consider the "Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles" inside joke.) This happened again on Sunday night, as Olbermann recounted the Oakland Raiders-Tennessee Titans contest: "Nine-three in the first half. We skipped the first half because it was really boring. LenDale White started finding some huge holes, 27 carries, 133 [yards]. It’s like falling off a roof."

To Green Bay Packer fans, this line was a jaw-dropper. Over the weekend, legendary Packers receiver (and long-time radio announcer) Max McGee was buried after falling off his roof in suburban Minneapolis and dying at the age of 75. How could Olbermann be this insensitive?

One of O'Reilly's staffers confronted Rosie O'Donnell during a book signing last Friday night. The person appeared to be Jesse Watters, longtime "Factor" producer who is known to track down celebrities and news makers who refuse to appear on O'Reilly's show. Watters wanted to know why Rosie would not respond to numerous requests for her to come on the "Factor." Rosie told Watters that if O'Reilly wants her on his show, he should personally call her.

When asked about her controversial views of 9/11, Rosie denied saying the terror attack was an "inside job." Rosie decided it was time to throw out Mr. Watters when he wanted to know her thoughts on WTC Building 7. Watters was removed from the book store at that point. Click here to view the video.

In a segment on Sunday’s "60 Minutes," anchor Scott Pelley described how "The enemy has killed hundreds of civilians this year, but surprisingly, almost the same number of civilians have been killed by American and allied forces." Pelley focused on U.S. air strikes citing a statistic from the liberal group Human Rights Watch: "So far this year, 17 air strikes have killed more than 270 civilians, according to the humanitarian organization Human Rights Watch."

Pelley introduced the segment by exclaiming that:

It's been six years since the liberation of Afghanistan, but the fighting there now is the greatest it's been since the start of the war, and more civilians are dying...With relatively few troops on the ground, the U.S. And NATO rely on air power, and civilian deaths from air strikes have doubled. Now, there's concern that those deaths are undermining Afghan support for the war.

Of course framing the story in this way followed the typical mainstream media template of suggesting that the war in Iraq has diverted resources from where they are needed and that U.S. actions are a cause of anti-Americanism throughout the world.

Love the article that states:  If the press doesn't come to your press conference did you really hold a press conference? 

:scratching head:

I know I'm missing some questions here that I should be asking, like. . .if it really was staged, how did it get covered by regular network outlets to begin with?  Say a govt agency up & decides to make their own little interview using only their employees, well then how does it get on TV?

Okay, they're recording; the tape is rolling. . .then where does it go?
 
Once it goes to the station (what station, btw?), the producer(s) would be all, "Who the #$%K are those guys, and where are my field reporters Barry, Larry, and their associate Gary?"

-PJ

PS, Links would be appreciated as well.

NB has had a few 9/11 stories lately, maybe they'll want to post this one to try and smear Martin Sheen? Well, if so...here ya go:

http://prisonplanet....

If you watched the October 28 CBS “Evening News,” you would probably have been expecting a rough ride today based on their reporting.

The likely ousting of Merrill Lynch CEO Stanley O’Neal prompted CBS correspondent Randall Pinkston to tell viewers to expect the worst as far as the stock market goes.

“O'Neal's likely exit sets the stage for another rough ride on Wall Street this week with more dramatic peaks expected in crude oil prices which hit nearly $92 a barrel last week and further uncertainty in the housing market,” Pinkston said.

However, in the short-term, that’s not the case. The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished up 64 points to close at 13,869 one day after his gloomy report. And, investors even welcomed the news of the shakeup at Merrill Lynch (NYSE:MER), as its stock finished up 2 percent.

Chris Matthews got his start in politics by writing speeches for Jimmy Carter, well on Monday night, the "Hardball" host returned to his roots when he penned an anti-war screed that he urged Barack Obama to use as a way to attack Hillary Clinton from the left. The following excerpt is how Matthews opened the October 29 edition of "Hardball" (video available here):

Matthews: "Good evening, I'm Chris Matthews and welcome to Hardball. The 2008 election, that's the spotlight tonight. Iowa, which starts the whole thing January 3rd, is now a dead heat between Hillary and Obama. Here's what I think Obama should say, starting tomorrow night, at the big MSNBC debate in my hometown of Philly.

On October 21, the New Jersey Family Policy Council held a protest against "same-sex marriage" in state capital of Trenton, but no one in the media seemed to notice the hundreds of citizens who showed up. On October 27, 150 protesters in Camden, New Jersey protested the Iraq War. Yawn? Not if you’re the Camden Courier-Post, which covered the liberal protest, and ignored the conservative one.

Reporter Lavinia deCastro wrote:

About 150 people stood in the rain in front of the Walt Whitman Arts Center in Camden on Saturday morning to participate in an anti-war rally that started in South Jersey and ended in Philadelphia. It was part of a nationwide "Day of Mobilization to End the War in Iraq."

The Camden paper also had a promotional story on Saturday, before the rally.

From the Cleveland Plain Dealer's David Briggs, quoted in entirety for fair use and discussion purposes -- the news and the preceding posts explain it all:

New Cleveland imam quits before he starts

Imam Ahmed Alzaree announced Monday, three days before he was to start work as the spiritual leader of the Islamic Center of Cleveland, that he was resigning.

Alzaree said allegations by bloggers that he was anti-Semitic and was associated with individuals suspected of having terrorist ties so poisoned the atmosphere in Northeast Ohio that he and his wife, Marwa, decided to look elsewhere.

"Cleveland now is a nightmare for her," Alzaree said. "It will never be a good start for me and the Jewish community.

The mosque has accepted Alzaree's resignation, Zahid Siddiqi, general secretary of the mosque's executive committee, said Monday afternoon.

"We certainly don't want to impose on him and his family," Siddiqi said.

Alzaree is the former spiritual leader of the Islamic Center of Omaha.

Links to previous posts are after the jump.

Update: Briggs posted a much longer piece just after 5PM, apparently for the Metro section.

The John Edwards presidential campaign couldn't have asked for a more flattering article than the one printed Friday by New Hampshire's Concord Monitor.

In an interview with the paper's Lauren Dorgan, Edwards promised universal health care, universal pre-kindergarten, matched savings accounts for poor people, and a new iniative called "College for Everyone." All of these new programs are going to require significant amounts of tax money in order to be paid for.

Instead of asking Edwards where he would get the money to pay for his massive spending increases, Dorgan and her Monitor colleages let Edwards off the hook with a spin that he's only asking America to "sacrifice." Here's an excerpt:

Two weeks after seeming to take the side of a "sexual educator" who advocated giving birth control to middle school children, "Good Morning America" co-anchor Diane Sawyer exhorted the same position on Monday's show. Sawyer discussed the case of a Maine school system voting to allow contraceptives to be given to children as young as 11 with Fox News host Bill O'Reilly. The GMA journalist operated from the assumption that such activity can't be stopped. She asked O'Reilly, "Yes, but if they're sexually active anyway, at some point, don't you have to address the reality of what is going on in the schools?"

The ABC co-host tried to minimize the fact that parents won't be told specifically when birth control is given by claiming, "Well, but they've told the parents birth control pills may be given as part as the overall health." O'Reilly mocked that justification as "insane." On October 17, Sawyer discussed the issue with conservative commentator Glenn Beck and lectured, "You may not like it. You may want parents to go in and take care of their own children and make sure that they're not sexually active that young, but it's happening. It's happening."

It appears that the hypocrisy of reporting global-warming alarmism stories has no bounds.

NBC Universal’s “Green is Universal” initiative is sending staff across the planet to either cover or cause global warming. That effort “takes an unprecedented look at Planet Earth.” Three members of the ‘Today’ crew – Matt Lauer, Ann Curry and Al Roker – will emit 24.9 tons of carbon to go to the ends of the earth to show viewers climate is affecting the planet. That number is more than three times what a typical American emits in a whole year. (See video here.)

“Well, the journey has begun,” “Today” co-host Matt Lauer said on the October 29 broadcast. “‘Today’ is going to the ends of the earth to report on the changing climate and examine the limits of human exploration in an unprecedented simultaneous broadcast from the top, the bottom and the middle of the world.”

Do you find it amazing that the same media doing everything possible to ignore global warming skeptics whilst almost exclusively focusing attention on entities advancing climate change hysteria (i.e. Al Gore) are constantly accusing the Bush administration of censorship regarding this issue?

The most recent example of such absurdity transpired when assertions were made about nefariously edited Senate testimony given last Tuesday by the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Julie Gerberding.

Though many in the media credited the Associated Press for breaking the story, it appears this conspiracy theory might first have been hatched by Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Cal.), as according to LexisNexis, the following announcement posted at the website of the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works was published by US Fed News at 2:46AM EST Tuesday:

A segment on Monday’s CBS "Early Show" by co-host Julie Chen about accusations by the late President Ford of Bill Clinton being a "sex addict," was in sharp contrast to an interview last week with author Sally Bedell Smith, when co-host Harry Smith referred to the Clintons as a "still-young couple" and "political rock stars."

Smith teased the Monday segment on Clinton’s sex addiction by saying, "Plus, a presidential scandal comes back in the spotlight. Find out who's calling Bill Clinton a sex addict." Contrast that statement with Smith’s glowing assessment of the Clinton marriage from last Tuesday’s segment on Bedell-Smith’s new book on the Clinton marriage:

A simple Google search reveals there are more than 40 books about this still-young couple. They met in law school, two bookish, wonkish, idealistic kids who somehow transformed themselves into political rock stars.

Strangely, in last week’s segment Smith never thought to ask a single question about the affect of Bill Clinton’s sex scandals on the marriage.

A major presidential candidate is straddling the fence between two key constituencies: gay voters and black churchgoers who tend to frown on homosexuality. Yet when profiling Barack Obama's gospel concert campaign swing through South Carolina, Washington Post staffer Sridhar Pappu all but left that verse out of his October 29 hymn of praise, "In S.C., Obama Seeks a Spiritual Reawakening."

Gay activists have slammed Obama for inviting ex-gay gospel singer Donnie McClurkin to perform/campaign for the Illinois Democrat. Obama has repudiated McClurkin's personal views on homosexuality and in response to criticism from gay activists invited an openly gay preacher, Andy Sidden, to appear at the same campaign event as McClurkin. Obama stopped short of asking McClurkin to withdraw from his scheduled performance.

Yet nowhere in Pappu's article did Sidden's name surface, and the only mention of consternation within the ranks of liberal interest groups over Obama's affiliation with McClurkin was relegated to an oblique parenthetical reference:

(The gospel series also draws attention because of the inclusion of the Grammy-winning gospel singer Donnie McClurkin, who has publicly said he overcame his homosexual thoughts and desires through prayer.)

Pappu's treatment of the campaign gimmick of marrying Gospel music with an Obama campaign pitch was nowhere near the critical treatment conservative evangelicals get from liberal journalists for ventures such as "Justice Sunday" (emphases mine):

What is it about Good Housekeeping magazine that underlines the feminism of our TV news stars? Four years ago, Katie Couric talked about her mother volunteering for Planned Parenthood and buying stock in condom companies. In the November 2007 issue, NBC's Meredith Vieira fondly recalled growing up with a feminist mother who disliked the "male-dominated hierarchy" of the Catholic church and how she now has a "spirituality, not a religion." First, about her parents:

Vieira lights up talking about them. "I was raised Catholic, but my mom was a real feminist who didn't like the male-dominated hierarchy of the church," Vieira says proudly. "She was tough about it. She went to church and was a believer, but she didn't like the trappings."

Instead of growing up Catholic, it seems Vieira drew a stronger influence from her Quaker schooling:

According to the media website TV Week, "most TV news operations" deemed Arnold Schwarzenegger's grabbing of "Good Morning America" reporter Claire Shipman's hands during an interview to be "inappropriate." The exchange, which was first reported last Wednesday on NewsBusters, occurred after Shipman repeatedly tried to get the California governor to admit that some efforts to combat the state's wildfires were going poorly. At that point, the former actor seized the journalist's hands and proclaimed, "...You're looking for a mistake and you won't find it because it's all good news, as much as you maybe hate it, but it's good news." Apparently, Shipman found Schwarzenegger's actions "bizarre and amusing."

According to TV Week, the physical touching amounted to applying "force to a female reporter" and an attempt to "muscle" her. TV Week's Michele Greppi cited the MRC for highlighting the story: "The Media Research Center, founded by Brent Bozell to wage a war against liberal bias in journalism, posted a transcript of the interview....The headline was 'Arnold Grabs ABC’s Shipman, Demands: Stop Spinning Fire Coverage.'" TV Week also explained how the elite media reacted to the governor's grabbing. Greppi wrote, "At most TV news operations, the Schwarzenegger move was regarded as inappropriate on his part and smoothly handled on hers."

Americans have fallen behind in science in math and can't compete globally, right? Well, not according to Vivek Wadhwa's October 26 BusinessWeek article, which the media have conveniently ignored.

For years, the media warned about US students' deficient science and math