As NewsBusters previewed here and here, CBS’s “60 Minutes” aired a segment Sunday dealing with a small group of American troops that have signed a petition called “Appeal For Redress.” Simply put, these soldiers want U.S. troops to come home from Iraq immediately.

Unfortunately, the piece exaggerated the size of this group, while also misrepresenting military opinion of the war (video available here courtesy of Ms Underestimated, approximate transcript available here courtesy of CBSNews.com).

CBS’s Steve Kroft introduced the segment:

Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez has never been shy in taking slaps at the Catholic Church, especially the archdiocese of Los Angeles. And then there was his February 18, 2007, column, in which facts and truth went by the wayside. Wrote Lopez,

Look, I was never a perfect student in Catholic school. But I recall a thing or two about the Christian duty of looking after the neediest amongst us. And if I've learned anything in the last two years, it's that this city has a lot of need.

It's time for [Los Angeles Cardinal Roger] Mahony to lead his army of Christian soldiers down the hill and into the service of their fellow men. I know from experience that one person can make a difference in someone's life. I'd even volunteer, selflessly, to make some introductions.

(h/t Thought Police)

Underground Exclusive

The website goosesteppingbush.org has been provided a detailed list of Girl Scout Troops throughout the Eastern Seaboard that have been kidnapped by George W. Bush and his evil puppet master Karl Rove. The Green smock clad young girls were further subjected to humiliation and fear when they were dropped off at Midnight Basketball games in the inner cities of America’s major cities governed by Democrats. The list of the victimized Girl Scouts are listed here. PARENTS – please do not read this list until you are properly notified by local authorities.

To add insult to injury, the President pocketed the cash without informing the First Lady of the increase in personal income, according to an anonymous Secret Service agent. This is a very sad turn of events, given the fact that Jenna Bush’s last pedicure was a little more than $60.

Al and Tipper Gore just consented to an interview with Ryan Seacrest on the E! pre-Oscar festivities. (First question: Tipper's wearing Bill Blass, Al Gore reluctantly noted he's wearing Ralph Lauren.) The goofiest answer was when Seacrest asked Gore, "if you were to cast an actor to play the lead in 'The Al Gore Story,' who would you pick?" Gore quipped, "I don't know, maybe William Hung," the infamous "American Idol" reject who mangled Ricky Martin's "She Bangs." Seacrest laughed and said "I  love it, I mean, the 'Idol' reference!" When Seacrest asked if that performance was one of his favorites, he said it was "right up there," and then said "no, no, no" and insisted that his favorite song is the lesbian rocker Melissa Etheridge's song "I Need to Wake Up." Guess why? It's up for an Oscar for its inclusion in Gore's film. Lyrics, please:

And as a child
I danced like it was 1999
My dreams were wild
The promise of this new world
Would be mine
Now I am throwing off the carelessness of youth
To listen to an inconvenient truth

A truly shocking discussion transpired on Sunday’s “The Chris Matthews Show” that conceivably has grave implications for the presidential aspirations of Hillary Clinton.

Before getting to the guts, the gist of this surprising conversation between host Chris Matthews and former CBS anchorman Dan Rather was how farcical the current move by Senate Democrats to “repeal the 2002 resolution for war” is. Furthermore, though it is a dangerous tactic for the left, the person most negatively impacted could be Sen. Clinton who “has to be careful to not come across as a chickenhawk.”

Adding to the surprising nature of this segment, Matthews actually began the discussion by comically mocking Democrats for this new strategy (Hot Air has video available here):

Is there any canard against President Bush more tired than the notion that he ignores the Establishment Clause, or as his liberal critics tend to put it, the "separation of church and state"? Maureen Dowd offered a classic exemplar of the criticism on this morning's Meet the Press, telling Tim Russert that: "W has sort of merged church and state while trying to keep them apart in Iraq."

Russert didn't ask Dowd to substantiate her assertion. But when Bush antagonists are pressed for proof, they typically point to the president's Faith-Based Initiative and the manner in which the W incorporates religious themes in his public pronouncements. But as has been documented, Pres. Bush has in fact invoked religion much less explicitly than many of his predecessors, including liberal icon FDR. In his D-Day prayer, for example, Roosevelt stated, among other things, that "with Thy blessing, we shall prevail over the unholy forces of our enemy." I defy Dowd or others sharing her view to provide an example of Pres. Bush coming anywhere close to FDR in suggesting that God is on our side. As for the Faith-Based Initiative, it incorporates a variety of safeguards specifically designed to prevent violation of the Establishment clause, including the following:

If NBC wants to support the effort of Joe Biden and Carl Levin to adopt a new resolution undercutting the 2002 version that authorized President Bush to go to war against Iraq, let it put Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann out there to make the case. But please don't misrepresent to the public what that 2002 resolution [full text here] said.

On this morning's "Today," NBC reporter John Yang asserted the following:

"That 2002 measure allowed the president to go after weapons of mass destruction and topple Saddam Hussein. There were no weapons and Saddam's been executed."

View video here.

Whether intentionally or not, Yang misrepresented the scope of what the 2002 resolution authorized the president to do. Here is the verbatim text of the section of the 2002 resolution setting for the the authorization:

The headline on the front page read: “Al Gore, Rock Star; Oscar Hopeful May Be America's Coolest Ex-Vice President Ever.”

No, this wasn’t the National Enquirer or some other cheesy tabloid that you try to ignore when you’re at a supermarket checkout counter.

This was the Washington Post.

And, much as the headline, the text despicably read like a tabloid story about Britney Spears' shaved head or Elvis sightings in Las Vegas as if written by a starstruck groupie (emphasis mine throughout):

Original caption:

In this photograph provided by 'Meet the Press,' White House Press Secretary Tony Snow appears on 'Meet the Press'' with Tim Russert Sunday, Feb. 18, 2007, at the NBC studios in Washington.

As we are now just hours away from former Vice President and soon-to-be-Dr. Al Gore receiving an Oscar for creating a deceitful schlockumentary about global warming, it seems appropriate to hear from another member of the scientific community that is not buying into this junk science.

For those unfamiliar, Patrick J. Michaels is a Senior Fellow in Environmental Studies at the Cato Institute, and a research professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia. On Friday, he had an op-ed published at National Review Online that discredited much of the hysterical nonsense depicted in Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” (emphasis mine throughout):