If there were any doubt as to the degree to which the MSM loathes and distrusts President Bush, it should be dispelled by the performance of Sy Hersh on today's Hardball and the way he was applauded by Chris Matthews. At the end of Hersh's appearance, Matthews put this question to the investigative reporter:

"What's your biggest worry in the world? Is it Iran? Is it this administration going to war with Iran? Is it a civil war in Iraq? Is it Musharraf's inability to fight the Taliban on his own soil? What's your biggest worry?"

Hersh was nothing if not succinct: "George Bush."

View video here.

Last night, ABC "World News with Charles Gibson" and CBS "Evening News" devoured a recent report from the food police: Center for Science in the Public Interest. The CSPI report charges casual dining restaurants with serving high calorie and high fat appetizers, entrees and desserts and promotes federally mandated nutrition information on menus.

While both programs did include restaurant spokesmen, the meat of both stories came straight from the CSPI release which is not surprising since CSPI experts frequently appear in network news stories -- most recently on February 20, 21, 22, 23 and then in the "extreme eating" stories on the 26th.

As noted in NewsBusters on Monday, NBC’s "Today" show breathlessly reported the claims, articulated by filmmaker James Cameron in a new Discovery Channel documentary, that the tomb of Jesus, with Christ buried inside, has been located. Co-anchor Matt Lauer hyped the network’s exclusive interview with Cameron by credulously repeating the documentary’s assertions and stating the film could "rock Christianity to its core."

In contrast, the other networks provided a more skeptical interpretation. On the February 26 edition of ABC’s "Nightline," anchor Terry Moran repeatedly noted that many archaeologists are skeptical of the claims that the tomb of Jesus and a reported family have been found. On Tuesday’s "Good Morning America," reporter Dan Harris prefaced a segment on the subject by observing, "If the claims in this new documentary are true, and many people doubt that they are, they would challenge some of Christianity's central articles of faith..." Over on CBS, "Early Show" anchor Hannah Storm peppered the film’s director, Simcha Jacobovici, with a number of tough questions:

Hannah Storm: "Simcha, are you attacking the basic tenets of Christianity that Jesus indeed rose from the dead?"

Hannah Storm: "What about people who say this is nothing more than a publicity stunt, Simcha?"

In a press statement released today, MRC President Brent Bozell urged the Discovery Channel to table the misleading James Cameron documentary "The Lost Tomb of Jesus."

“If the Discovery Channel fails to cancel this slanderous ‘documentary,’ it will have to explain why it is intentionally misleading the public,” said L. Brent Bozell III, president of the Media Research Center, referring to Sunday’s upcoming airing of The Tomb of Jesus. “They should be embarrassed by this plunge into sensational speculation masquerading as ‘science.’ To slander Christianity at the start of the Lenten season is unconscionable.”

As NewsBusters.org reported yesterday, the February 26 edition of NBC's "Today" show plugged the upcoming documentary with a softball interview with producer James Cameron and journalist Simcha Jacobovici. [continued...]

This morning's tragic incident in Afghanistan, when a suicide bomber blew himself up outside the gate of the U.S. military base where Vice President Dick Cheney was staying, seems to answer any questions regarding "excessive secrecy" of Cheney's trip to Pakistan and then Afghanistan.

But as of this morning, New York Times reporter David Sanger had his doubts. In his Tuesday morning print story, "Cheney Warns Pakistan To Act Against Terrorists," Sanger devoted a great deal of space to the "unusual secrecy" surrounding Cheney's trip.

ABC Nightline co-host Terry Moran helped expose the anti-Christian prejudice of John Edwards’ official campaign bloggers (who’ve since quit the campaign), asking three weeks ago on his ABCNews.com blog whether Edwards condoned “hate speech” by refusing to fire the pair. But Moran himself failed to mention the controversy in a two-segment profile of Edwards on Monday’s Nightline.

Back on February 6, Moran listed some examples of the hostile anti-Christian views espoused by Edwards’ campaign blogger Amanda Marcotte on her own personal site and suggested the issue reflected poorly on Edwards himself:

Questions: What, if anything, does it tell us about Edwards that he's joined up with this blogger? Is Edwards' association with a person who has written these things a legitimate issue for voters, as they wonder--among other things--whom he might appoint to high office if he's elected?

On "Couric & Co.," her CBSNews.com blog, Katie Couric warned Monday that while Gore was greeted "as a secular saint" for his Oscar win, she worried about a backlash from the Bush team or conservatives or those rare scientists -- "many on the payrolls of big companies" -- who disagree with Gore's global warming alarmism. Couric said the social consensus is here, and "my fervent hope is that Hollywood’s embrace of Al Gore doesn’t give people an excuse to condemn and mock the effort — and oppose taking steps that we as a society need to take to deal with the issue of climate change. Some people find anything trendy repugnant, but this is a trend that’s really important."

Right after pronouncing her opinion that movie star Penelope Cruz was best-dressed at the Oscars, Couric proclaimed:

He was an absolute wreck until a fleeting glimpse of JFK saved his life and paved the road of his destiny.

Sounds like the dust cover to a Democratic politician's biography, right? Try the opening grafs to Washington Post reporter Mary Beth Sheridan's February 27 profile of House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.)

"His father abandoned him. His stepfather was an alcoholic. By his sophomore year at the University of Maryland, Steny Hoyer was short of cash, getting D's and drifting," Washington Post repoter Mary Beth Sheridan began her front page profile of House Majority Leader.

Then one spring day in 1959, a Pontiac convertible cruised past him on campus, carrying a familiar figure. Hoyer followed it to the student center. Spellbound, he listened as Sen. John F. Kennedy appealed to young people to get involved in government.

"It was just like that," Hoyer says, snapping his fingers as he sits in his U.S. Capitol office. "Just like that." The next week, he switched his major from public relations to politics. He started getting A's and went on to law school.

"You know the rest," he says.

As a lifelong Marylander, I do know the rest. Hoyer -- full disclosure, he's my congressman -- is a consistently liberal Democrat (lifetime ACU rating of 8), a point often softened by media portrayals which often refer to him as a moderate due to his penchant for supporting local military installations with government largesse.

Dr. Global Warming, aka Al Gore, in his 1992 book “Earth in the Balance,” proclaimed that the internal combustion engine was “a mortal threat . . . more deadly than that of any military enemy.”

An op-ed written by an economics professor at the University of Georgia counters Gore’s dire assertions, and fervently stated that this invention is actually saving the planet.

In his piece published Tuesday in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Dwight R. Lee wrote (h/t JunkScience.com, emphasis mine throughout): "The motto of all environmentalists should be 'Thank goodness for the internal combustion engine.'"

Got your attention? Good, for Lee was armed for Gore, err, I mean bear:

And now for some NB news: I mentioned some changes coming to NB recently and one of them is that Ken Shepherd is now our Managing Editor. Greg Sheffield is leaving his spot but will still remain a contributing editor.

We're also getting close to being ready to perform a major software upgrade. This will involve making the site read-only for several hours during a weekend. Just thought I should announce this beforehand so no one gets surprised.

In November 2000, during the disputed presidential election won by George W. Bush (excuse the indulgence; I just enjoy typing those words, especially considering the alternative), Dick Cheney and others were (in hindsight, rightfully) pointing to negative indicators in the economy pointing to a possible recession. Furious supporters of what was to become the previous administration accused Cheney of "talking down the economy" -- a charge that was lapped up by the Mainstream Media at the time.

It was nonsense, of course. But if you really believe that a soon-to-be-Vice President can "talk down the economy," a former Federal Reserve Chairman, Mr. "Irrational Exuberance" himself, who may still have at least informal access to information many of us don't, can be fairly accused of the same thing -- can't he?

Here's some of what Greenspan said Monday:

An Asian Writer Copping Jesse Jackson's Race-baiting Game Attacked By San Francisco Chronicle For 'Why I Hate Blacks' Article

There is a saying that is often bandied about by whites feigning what might be ridiculed as an American Black person's defeatist demeanor. It is used when whites want to make fun of the kind of attitude that assumes everyone in power is somehow out to get you. It goes like this: "I'm tired of the white man keeping me down." It's an eye-rolling proclamation, but it is one that many whites assume is inculcated in Black Americans all across the country. Of course it is an unwelcome stereotype.

It is a stereotype, however, that has been adopted as reality in all too real a sense by American Universities and is posited as a raison d'etre for wasting time and money on things like "Black studies" programs. The sentiment is replicated in "Hispanic studies", "Women's studies", and "Gay studies" in equal measures and with as much illegitimacy.

The (insert group here) is keeping you down so rebel against it. Be angry. "Speak truth to power".

It's clap-trap, of course.

Who's cooler: Al Gore or Clint Eastwood? A fistful of dollars in my book says it's Dirty Harry. But a leading MSM light voted for Al over Eastwood and every other guy at the Oscars. Could that suggest that an MSM campaign for an Al Gore presidential run has begun?

This morning's "Today" devoted a big six-minute segment to the prospect of a Gore candidacy. Andrea Mitchell declared Al "suddenly cool." Not bad, but not close to Meredith Vieira, who proclaimed that Gore was "definitely the coolest guy in the room" at the Oscars. I didn't watch a minute of it, but thought I'd check the nominee list to see just who else was in that room. Here are just some of the nominees in the house that Meredith found didn't measure up to Al: Leonardo DiCaprio, Peter O'Toole, Will Smith, Eddie Murphy and Mark Wahlberg. Then there was the aforementioned Clint Eastwood, who presented an award. Not to mention Jack Nicholson, who was also on hand.

Perhaps all you need to know about Al is that Jimmy Carter is a big fan. Carter popped up in a video clip to remind Gore that he "could do infinitely more as incumbent of the White House than he can as a maker of movies, even ones that get Oscars."

View video here.

First, take a look at the appalling illustration that accompanies the article in Time magazine this week (February 26, 2007, page 46). In the darkest of colors and tones, a sinister-looking, pasty-faced priest is pictured. As his empty, white eyes furtively peer back towards the viewer, his pale, wiry fingers grip what looks to be a Bible. Paper money is leafing out of the book pages. (I've posted the illustration here.) The artist is Sam Weber. I don't know if he's familiar with the 19th-century anti-Catholic drawings by Thomas Nast or the modern-day, anti-Vatican caricatures by Jack Chick; but I bet both guys would be proud. (By the way, do you think Time would allow the same caricature using a rabbi? I wouldn't think so.)

The article is, "Pilfering Priests," by Tim Padgett. (Online, the title is "When Priests Pilfer.") The heading below the main title warns, "the Catholic Church is facing another crisis: clergy who steal money from their parishes." Interesting. But what are the facts?

Click here for instructions on running Gaggle daily on your own site. There's also an archive of previous toons available here.

Huge breaking news. A reporter from the BBC is reporting in NYC on 9/11. They are talking about the "Saloman Brothers building", aka WTC 7. They are reporting that the building has also collapsed along with the Twin Towers. It is estimated that this was reported roughly 23 minutes before the building actually did fall. For those of you saying, "well, duh, isn't this report AFTER the building fell?" NO! THE BUILDING IS STILL STANDING IN THE BACKGROUND! HAHAH! The BBC screwed up BIGTIME!

http://www.prisonpla...

9/11 was an inside job! What do you people have to see to realize that!