On Monday's NBC Nightly News, Tom Brokaw gave a sentence to a criticism of the Clinton administration, by former CIA Director George Tenet, not mentioned in broadcast network evening newscast stories last week, or Monday night on ABC and CBS, nor on Sunday's two-part 60 Minutes interview -- all of which focused on Tenet's attacks on Bush officials. Brokaw relayed: “He said that he was frustrated during the Clinton administration because, he said, Attorney General Janet Reno had ruled that a CIA plan to assassinate Osama bin Laden was illegal.” Brokaw didn't raise that subject during his live Monday Today show session with Tenet about Tenet's book, At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA, but it could come up in part two set to air Tuesday morning on tape.

Brokaw had ridiculously implied on Friday's NBC Nightly News that conservatives who have cited former CIA director George Tenet's “slam dunk” comment about Iraq possessing WMD had, in fact, claimed that the comment was a prediction that the war itself against Iraq would be a “slam dunk.” Brokaw relayed how Tenet insisted “he was talking about assembling a stronger case to take to the public so it would have a better understanding of what the CIA believed to be true. He was not, he says, saying that a war against Iraq was a slam dunk.” (Brad Wilmouth's NewsBusters item)

In the wake of NBC's and MSNBC's embarrassment over the firing of Don Imus for his racial insensitivity to black women on the Rutgers basketball team, NBC News promoted Lyne Pitts, a member of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ), to be vice president of NBC News. Mrs. Pitts, the wife of CBS correspondent Byron Pitts, has ascended rapidly since she arrived to produce the Weekend Today programs in February 2006.

It's not hard to imagine this has a lot to do with assuaging the roiling internal rage over Imus that boiled over in that meeting NBC News President Steve Capus had with Al Roker and the gang before Imus was canned. Don't miss this sentence in her job description: "She also serves as the division's point person on diversity issues."

Yes Rosie, The War Is Lost

The Typical Democrat Double Standard
by Mark Harris, NationalPoliticalDigest.com

War is the most horrible stage in human relations. That’s why most leaders defer to it only as a last resort. Now, good people might disagree as to when war should finally be triggered, but that is the debate that takes place within most modern social structures.

The Iraq war began only after a series of events, or lack thereof, took place. Calls for the President’s
and Vice-President’s respective impeachments are ludicrous. There is an historical record in this,
ception has defeated their effectiveness. Instead of the inspectors disarming Saddam, Saddam has disarmed the inspectors. This situation presents a clear and present danger to the stability of the Persian Gulf and the safety of people everywhere. The international community gave Saddam one last chance to resume cooperation with the weapons inspectors. Saddam has failed to seize the chance. And so we had to act and act now...

CIA operative E. Howard Hunt confesses to the JFK conspiracy on his death bed to his son.

http://www.saintjohn...

I know he was probably lying and all, but I thought some would like this little bit of news.

And you guys don't think someone can keep a secret...lol....

NBC's Today show loves to promote former administration officials with scathing tell-alls, so long as they're criticizing a Republican president. Tom Brokaw's prodding of George Tenet to criticize the Bush administration's path to war was just the latest example of Today show's love of former GOP administration officials with an ax to grind.

Back in 2004, then Today co-host Katie Couric praised former Bush Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill's book for its critiques of President George W. Bush. However if the tell-all slights a Democratic administration, as George Stephanopolous did with his book, Today takes a decidedly more skeptical tone. Of his 1999 tome, All Too Human, Couric called Stephanopolous' revelations "creepy" and wondered if he was "a turncoat."

CBS "Evening News" showcased Aflac CEO Dan Amos on April 29 because the company plans to begin giving shareholders a vote on executive compensation beginning in 2009.

While CBS correspondent Mark Strassmann did explain that the shareholders' vote would be non-binding, the premise of the story was that it could create a ripple effect throughout corporate America.

"Other CEOs may soon get the message -- perform or you're a sitting duck," said correspondent Mark Strassmann.

Strassmann also supplied viewers with a common class envy talking point: "In one work day, America's average CEO earns more than the average employee makes all year."

New York Times reporter Duff Wilson, author of the notorious front-page story from August 25, 2006 riding to the defense of rogue prosecutor Michael Nifong's rape case hoax at Duke University, picks gingerly through the case's wreckage in Saturday's "'Credibility Issues' Undid Duke Case, Report Says," while avoiding his own contribution to it.

Blogger, law professor and case expert KC Johnson has noted the Times has never corrected falsehoods in the timeline in Wilson's August 25 story. Wilson's Saturday piece hews closer to the truth, but without acknowledging his original errors.

In an April 30 "Public Eye" entry, CBS ombudsblogger Brian Montopoli wrote about CBS's quandary over CIA director George Tenet has a faulty memory regarding an exchange with Richard Perle that supposedly happened the day after 9/11 at the White House. The problem, Perle was stuck in France. He returned to the country on Sept. 15, 2001. So what to do with Web site transcripts of the April 29 "60 Minutes" segment?

Well, it turns out CBS executives added an editor's note to online versions of the "60 Minutes" interview.

Montopoli wrote about the inclusion of the editor's note here, but it appears he failed to press the suits at CBS over why the supposed September 12, 2001, meeting was not verified before broadcast:

On the heels of his award-winning destruction of Congressman Mark Foley over inappropriate instant messages to teenaged House pages, ABC investigative reporter Brian Ross is on the sex beat again. On Monday's Good Morning America, Ross highlighted ABC’s plans to rummage through a D.C. madam’s list of prostitution clients for "people in the Bush administration." But in 1996, when the tabloid newspaper The Star found Bill Clinton’s chief political guru Dick Morris had a relationship with a prostitute, ABC News (and especially anchor Peter Jennings) found it ugly, distasteful business. On the August 26, 1996 World News Tonight, as President Clinton prepared for his convention’s acceptance speech, Jennings began with a complaining tone:

Good evening, we begin tonight with the sweet and the sour of the Presidential campaign. Here in Chicago today the President has been fine tuning as they say, the speech he will be giving to this convention and to the country tonight. And he has a lot to be pleased about. A very upbeat convention. A very successful train trip here with rising poll numbers to accompany it. And very important set of statistics about the economy today, which he will certainly point to as evidence that the country should re-elect him. And then along comes a nasty little scandal to take the edge off the good news at least for the day. The President’s chief political strategist, a man named Dick Morris, resigned from the campaign today, after a story in a supermarket tabloid that he has been having, he’s a married man, a lengthy relationship with a prostitute and talking about his job.

Over the weekend, blogger Jim Hanson (aka "Uncle Jimbo" at Blackfive) appeared on CNN's "This Week at War" where he asked about how the U.S. military was going to improve its response to the pretty sophisticated usage of the media that Islamic terrorists have begun to develop.

Of course, the fact that the terrorists have gotten good at using the media isn't simply a deficiency of the Pentagon. It's also one of the western media. Hanson pointed this out and mentioned CNN's airing of a tape of an al Quaeda sniper killing an American soldier as being part of the problem.

"You force me to point out you guys did put out a pretty heinous video of snipers, of the insurgents killing U.S. troops on CNN, so you guys to some extent helped them with their own propaganda."

Full transcript of the segment available at Blackfive. Click below the fold to watch the video.

"Put in a tax to make it $4 a gallon right now," urged CNN contributor Allen Wastler on the April 28 "In the Money."

Wastler's motivation for higher taxes was to encourage alternatives to gasoline.

"Because when you saw us flirting with $3, all the sudden we got a burst in hybrid production, we got a burst in ethanol production," Wastler explained to the "In the Money" crowd.

But the CNNMoney managing editor did not explain the burst in government mandates and regulations that helped fuel those alternatives.

The "In the Money" team including Ali Velshi and Christine Romans not only urged higher gas prices (with taxation), but hyped the threat of $4-a-gallon gasoline, though the national average is still below $3-a-gallon.

There is another scandal in the making concerning a Democratic presidential candidate’s blog. Longshot candidate Mike Gravel has a BIG problem. On his website, he proudly quoted and linked to a site which posted some online support of Gravel, excitedly announcing, “Meet the next president of the United States of America.” The site is called “Wake Up from Your Slumber.” Sounds nice and netrooty—very energizing and MoveOn-ish. Well, not exactly. It appears to be an anti-Semitic, conspiracy hate site.

Anyway, why do I think this? Well, it declares the Iranian president, Mahmoud “Death to Israel” Ahmadinejad is “The Man, The Legend” in a post that linked to a video of him denying the Holocaust. The post was titled, “Ahmadinejad: Zionists are NOT Jews” and quoted the Iranian president's speech about “Zionists” and, of course, world domination:

"The Zionists, I want to tell you, are NOT Jews.

That's the biggest deception we've ever faced.

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"Man Who Claims to Be Prophet Muhammad Alive and Well in Hoboken, Says It's Cool to Eat Pork"

Imagine that headline on ABCNews.com. And imagine the story included no Muslim imams or scholars to denounce the charlatan. Well, that's pretty much what ABC did today on an old story front-paged on its Web site today (see screencap on the right), only the religion in question was Christianity (and the fake Jesus in the story lives in Houston).

Here's the headline for the March 6, 2007, story by Jim Avila (yes, the dateline is correct, this story is over a month old):

Jesus Might Be Alive and Well in Houston
Jose de Jesus Drinks, Smokes and Claims to He's [sic] the Second Coming

On Monday’s "Good Morning America," anchor Chris Cuomo grilled returning White House Press Secretary Tony Snow over the new book by  George Tenet, the former director of the CIA. Citing Tenet’s criticisms of the White House’s pre-war activity, Cuomo asked this loaded question: "Is it time for the administration to come clean?"

The ABC anchor wondered if Bush was "out of touch" and asserted Tenet’s claims means "the administration was not straight with Americans, not about weapons of mass destruction, not about 9/11."

Additionally, Mr. Cuomo, who is both the son of former New York Governor Mario Cuomo (D) and the brother of that state’s current Democratic Attorney General, Andrew Cuomo, also failed to ask Snow about Tenet’s claim that aggressive interrogation has been very important to fighting the war on terror.

Harry Smith, who has a habit of double standards when conducting interviews, hammered returning White House press secretary Tony Snow on April 30's edition of The Early Show. After discussing Snow’s cancer treatment, Smith said "let’s go to work." Snow stated what many believe, that incorporated timetables are a stunt. An astonished Harry Smith interrupted and harshly inquired: "So the White House regards this, their, their insistence on troop withdrawals as a stunt?"

Snow, who previously accused Harry Smith of sounding like a partisan, immediately backpedaled, but pointed out that the current bill is "something [the Democrats] knew was never going to get passed." After Snow mentioned that Democrats "exhausted nearly three months doing this," Smith retorted "with the support of the American people by the way." Although it is true that, according to CBS’s own poll, 64 percent of Americans do support a timetable for withdrawal, they also found when they asked if Congress should allow continued troop funding without a timetable if it comes to that, 56 percent said yes. Harry never mentioned that polling result.

According to the New York Post's Don Kaplan, Roseanne Barr is the early favorite to replace the deposed Rosie O'Donnell.

Barr is no less of a liberal and almost as controversial as O'Donnell. If she were to replace O'Donnell, Barr would continue to tilt the show to the extreme left and fail to bring back the many viewers of "The View" who were offended at the numerous outrageous statements made by O'Donnell.

In a March appearance on HBO's "Real Time," Barr alleged that conservatives "liked Reagan because he's a confederate. [...] They worship him because he dismantled working rights for people."

Barr will bring a left-wing agenda to "The View." She admitted that she had one earlier this year:

For the fifth straight year, America's biggest newspapers (especially the left-leaning ones) have experienced big drops in circulation.

The Audit Bureau of Circulation released its annual numbers today. Among the findings: Two of the three national newspapers (USA Today and the Wall Street Journal) gained circ while the New York Times fell 2 percent on weekdays and nearly three-and-a-half percent on Sundays.

The biggest loser was the Dallas Morning News which was off 14 percent on weekdays and 13 percent on Sundays. The Miami Herald lost 10 percent on Sundays and 5.5 percent on weekdays.

Let's imagine for a moment now what types of stories we'd be hearing about these bad numbers if liberal journalists applied the same standards to themselves as they do to Republican presidents.

Now that you're done laughing, let me say that I don't think that liberal bias is the sole reason for these drops. It's also old thinking. The proof is that some papers like the New York Post and the Indianapolis Star have gained circulation. It can be done in an age of mass alienation from mass media. (h/t Stephen Spruiell)

For general discussion and comment...

The Bush administration: a bigger threat to national security than a foreign spy. That was Tom Brokaw's implicit assumption in his interview with former CIA Director George Tenet on this morning's "Today." Along the way, Brokaw accused former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld of running a "rogue" intelligence operation.

BROKAW: In the opening passage you describe conversations in the Clinton administration between the Palestinians and the Israelis attempting to get some sort of a new peace arrangement. But the Israelis were demanding the release of Jonathan Pollard, a United States military intelligence analyst who had been selling them secrets, who's in jail for life. You said if you release Jonathan Pollard, I'll resign from the CIA. And yet when you were the head of the CIA, you had Condi Rice ignoring your warnings, Vice-President Cheney exaggerating the threats repeatedly, Don Rumsfeld in the Pentagon running what effectively was a rogue CIA, his own intelligence operation, and you didn't threaten to resign then.

Pham Xuan Am served on the staff of Time magazine during the Vietnam War – and he also served as a communist spy for the Viet Cong. This should have been the cause of great embarrassment for liberal media outlets like Time. Instead, in 1990, former Time reporter H.D.S. Greenway wasn’t irate at his colleague, but expressed his anger in the Washington Post at the "right-wingers [who] seized on the An story to say that the press had fallen victim to a fiendish disinformation plot."

On Saturday’s Weekend Edition, NPR anchor Scott Simon interviewed Larry Berman, author of a new book on Pham Xuan Am called "Perfect Spy: The Incredible Double Life of Pham Xuan An, Time Magazine Reporter and Vietnamese Communist Agent." Simon might have been trying to help the author out, but the question he asked seemed like a no-brainer: "Did he give information that resulted in the deaths of South Vietnamese or American soldiers?"

Imagine a conservative congressperson doing something this unhinged and not getting raked over the coals in the press (Wall Street Journal link requires subscription):

Tuesday was Africa Malaria Day, and Michigan Representative John Conyers marked the event by inviting something called the Pesticide Action Network to Capitol Hill to denounce DDT as an unsafe malaria intervention. What was he thinking?

Malaria, which is spread through mosquito bites, kills about a million people annually, mostly children and pregnant women in Africa. We're not sure where the House Judiciary Chairman got his medical expertise, but he won't reduce that death toll by promoting disinformation about DDT and malaria prevention. And at taxpayers' expense, no less.

PAN and a shrinking band of other activist know-nothings insist that employing DDT against malaria is "especially dangerous for developing infants and children," but there is no scientific basis to the claim. Zip.

In Sunday’s paper, the L.A.Times has a piece that mourns a downturn of a portion of Mexico’s economy and, naturally, the Times blames the USA for it. How is it that the USA is responsible for this downturn? New home construction is down in California and illegal Mexicans have found themselves out of work because of it. This means that these out of work Mexicans cannot send US dollars to Mexico and, therefore, Mexican families back home are finding less money in their family incomes.

So, according to the L.A.Times, the US is unfairly hurting Mexican families because of a downturn in new home building in the USA. Why are we Americans so darn mean to those innocent illegals, anyway? For shame you selfish Americans!