Original caption:

NBC 'Today Show' co-host Matt Lauer, rear, and weatherman Al Roker ride a toboggan down a slope of snow imported onto the show's Rockefeller Plaza set in New York, Thursday, March 1, 2007 in a tribute to the nation's winter festivals.

A March 2, 2007, opinion piece by Los Angeles Times liberal Rosa Brooks addresses the recent CPAC convention. The title is, "The lunatic right returns." Subtle, eh? It gets worse.

1. Brooks refers to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth as a "goon squad," although the group is comprised of more than 280 men who bravely served their country during the Vietnam War. (link) (link)

Don't bother looking for it via Google News. There hasn't been a single major story published on him since Charles Rust-Tierney appeared in Court. A local source sent me this, which Google either didn't capture, or hasn't spidered, yet. Previous coverage here and here.

Alexandria, Va. (WUSA) -- A public defender from Arlington now finds that he is the accused. Fifty-one year old Charles Rust-Tierney appeared in United States District Court in Alexandria Wednesday.

I was at the 2007 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) for only part of the first day, but I think Politico.com writer Jonathan Martin's characterization of CPAC attendees as gloomy about the crop of 2008 hopefuls to be a little over-dramatic.

Caroline Daniel of the Financial Times, on the other hand, had a less dramatic view in her March 3 article, "Conservatives search for presidential candidate."*

Daniel reported that many attendees feel no one candidate captures all that they are looking, but noted in closing "some conservatives are willing to overlook" socially liberal stances from candidates like Giuliani if they are solid on the War on Terror.

Just an FYI... from an insider who liveblogged the entire sordid episode at HuffPost... and Arianna's lame excuse and deflection - three detailed blogs that document the truth of it all in detail:

http://jonquixotewor...

http://jonquixotewor...

http://jonquixotewor...

Regards,
JonQ

It seems likely given the focus the media gave Ann Coulter's remark about John Edwards that most NewsBusters readers know the controversial, never at a loss for words writer spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C., this past Friday.

For those that couldn't attend, our friend Ms Underestimated has the videos of Ann's speech and Q&A session here and here.

In yesterday's Los Angeles Times, columnist Rosa Brooks' piece is titled "The lunatic right returns." The cause of her current displeasure is the presence of people associated with Swift Boat Veterans for Truth on a Conservative Political Action Conference panel.

Comments Ms. Brooks: "IF YOU HATED IT the first time, you might like the sequel better.

"Remember Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the right-wing goon squad whose defamatory insinuations helped sink John Kerry's presidential campaign? They're back! This afternoon, key Swift boaters George 'Bud' Day, Mary Jane McManus and Carlton Sherwood are holding a little reunion, in the guise of a panel discussion at the American Conservative Union's annual Conservative Political Action Conference. The panel topic? 'The Left's Repeated Campaign Against the American Soldier.'"

I meant to post this yesterday but didn't have time to get to it at CPAC. A lot of people have noticed that profanity on conservative blogs is a lot scarcer than it is on the left-leaning ones. Believing this to be a correct hypothesis, I did a few Google searches and discovered that profanity is far more common on the left.

Lucky for my weekend, this information has already been distilled by Patrick Ishmael at the News Buckit blog. He went to Google looking up George Carlin's "seven dirty words" on many of the most-read right- and left-wing blogs. The results are unsurprising to anyone who's observed resident lefties here at NewsBusters.

His study isn't completely "scientific" since it is only a partial survey (leaving off NewsBusters and our count of 822 for instance), however, it is fairly comprehensive.

Anyway, the results are as follows: 1,537,788 instances in left-wing blogs compared to 38,107 (including NB) on right-wing blogs.

That's a pretty amazing disparity there. I'd say it's mainly due to the fact that 1) liberals are less "old-fashioned" when it comes to profanity than righties, 2) partisan anger seems higher when the opposite party is in power, 3) many of the non-deranged left work in the MSM, whereas the the non-deranged right is relegated to the blogosphere and 4) liberal bloggers' limited intelligence stops them from expressing themselves without profanity.

In his culture column this week, Brent Bozell talks about the rare hawkish corner of entertainment, and finds it a bit troubling that while "24" sends a gung-ho message in the War on Terror, it's starting to look a bit like an FX show. (Remember that episode of "The Shield" with the face-melting-on-the-burner scene?) He starts by noting his mother was always a big John Wayne fan, that standard-bearer of red-blooded patriotism, and salutes that neglected genre of entertainment. But:

The sixth season of “24" premiered on January 14, but this time even otherwise supportive critics are worried that Fox has gone over the top, with plot twists so extreme and brutal that one concludes the network is irresponsibly falling back on the old formula: shock for the sake of shock.

In 2002, ABC decided not to renew Bill Maher's contract apparently due to some disgraceful comments he made on his program "Politically Incorrect" following the 9/11 attacks. After what transpired on "Real Time" Friday, the heads of HBO should be equally outraged, if not more.

As the discussion moved to the attempted assassination of Vice President Cheney last week, Maher asked his panel why it was necessary for the Huffington Post to remove comments by readers concerning their disappointment that the attempt failed. As the conversation ensued, Maher said one of the most disgraceful and irresponsible things uttered on a major television program since Bush was elected.

In a nutshell, the host said the world would be a safer place if the assassination attempt succeeded. And, he even had the nerve to reiterate it. Here’s the deplorable sequence of events for those that have the stomach for it (video available here courtesy of our friend Ms Underestimated):

I've been genuinely concerned about Rhayes's safety, as I'm sure many of you are. It gets more difficult when there are so many conflicting stories, but here are the ones that I have heard to date. Once we determined which is the correct story, then maybe we can channel our resources to finding him.

1. Brother Hayes has become a disciple of Pat Robertson. This is the story that I am partial to. Brother Hayes and Pat Robertson are traveling across the country preaching the good news of Jesus, and it's tennant ideologies of Young Earth Creationism and that woman should wear long skirts and walk behind the man. Last I heard, they were being chased cross country by a hit squad from American Vampires Union. At last report from my source, they were holed up watching Savannah Smiles in a Dalton GA Motel 6. Godspeed fellas, if that's the case.

What was the refrain so often hurled at the right by the "good hearted" and "more civilized" left when Chelsea Clinton was brought into the campaign discussion in the 1990s? Didn't they all solemnly shake their heads in disgust over those eeevil Conservatives who were attacking the president's kid? Didn't they scold the right saying that a candidate's children should never be an issue? Well, apparently the New York Times has abandoned that genteel notion.

I sure remember the left wagging their fingers in the nation's face over this point repeatedly, don't you?

Yes, here we have, in Saturday's edition of the New York Times, an article dragging Rudy Giuliani's recently strained relationship with his two children into the public debate on his candidacy. Here we have the bastion of leftism trying to get at a candidate through his children in stark contrast to the tsk, tsking that the left indulged in during the Clinton years.

Did Maureen really mean to call Hillary "feral"? As in: "a domestic animal that has returned to the wild and lives without human attention"? Is there something about Hillary that brought to Dowd's mind the famed razorback from the senator's erstwhile state of Arkansas? In any case, we'll take Maureen at her word. In Where’s His Right Hook? this morning, Dowd describes Barack Obama as being "bullied" by "the feral Hillary." Yikes.

Dowd reports on a recent interview with Obama, to whom she variously refers as "Obambi" and "Barry," and lets us know she found herself, sitting across from him, feeling like the "nun [in the "Bells of St. Mary"] who teaches a schoolboy who’s being bullied how to box." So Obama brings out the protective nun in Dowd. I don't recall a woman ever mentioning that she felt like a nun in Bill Clinton's presence.

Dowd clearly has her doubts as to whether Obama has the requisite toughness as either candidate or leader: