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While the ABC and NBC evening newscasts led Tuesday night with President George W. Bush's veto of the Iraq funding bill with pull-out deadlines, CBS began with back-to-back stories trumpeting the cause of illegal immigrants and portraying them as the victims. “Tonight,” Katie Couric teased the CBS Evening News, “tens of thousands of protesters take to the streets of America to rally in support of illegal immigrants” and then, over video of a teen girl and her little sister, Couric fretted, “she was born here, but her parents were deported and there are many more like her.” Of course, it was the choice of the parents to not take the kids with them back to Mexico.

Citing how “it's estimated there are as many as 12 million in this country illegally,” Couric framed CBS's coverage around their agenda: “What are they and their supporters demanding?” Bill Whitaker highlighted the protests and the views of their advocates before acknowledging “the chance for real immigration reform seems slim again this year, so these marchers plan to keep up the pressure to change the laws and stop the deportations, which they say are breaking up families.” The next report picked up the theme: “I'm Sandra Hughes in San Diego, where nine-year-old Adeline Munoz packs for her weekly trip to Tijuana, Mexico. It's the only place she can see her parents. In February, Abel Munoz and Zulma Miranda were deported by immigration officials.” After obligatory heart-rendering soundbites from the kids, Hughes featured the mom: “The deportation was inhumane. Our kids will never forget it. The little one always tells will me, every time I hear a knock on the door, I think it's Immigration." Not until the very end of her piece, about six minutes into the newscast, did viewers hear from someone not so enamored with the cause of the illegals. Hughes set up a clip: “Critics of illegal immigration concede it's a tough situation, but one the parents themselves created.”

Not that there's anything wrong with that . . .

Actually, Bill Maher didn't add that Seinfeldesque qualifier when describing Republican affection for Ronald Reagan. Maher was a guest on this afternoon's "Hardball." In the course of taking a cheap shot at Fred Thompson, this Cornell alum [what is it about my alma mater, which also churned out Keith Olbermann?] had this to say:

BILL MAHER: It amuses me so much that the Republicans now are talking about the great charisma of Fred Thompson, basset-hound faced Fred Thompson. The Republican party has this campy fixation with Ronald Reagan. It is almost gay about the way they are talking about him and obsessing about him.

CBS might have bought the line of baloney former CIA Director George Tenet was selling on “60 Minutes” Sunday. However, according to the Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz, not many others are (emphasis mine throughout, h/t Glenn Reynolds):

Somewhere out there, there must be someone defending George Tenet. I'm just having trouble finding that person (or persons).

Let's see: Liberals are ticked off. Conservatives feel betrayed. Ex-CIA types are angry. White House officials are playing defense. That pretty much runs the gamut, doesn't it?

Yeah, pretty much Howard. He deliciously continued:

The screencap at right is a few hours old, but the visual was striking to me.

Notice how "STALLED: Slow auto sales blamed on housing market, gas prices" and "Fuel cost rise is fast, furious" are stories with prime real estate and a visual aid.

But also take note of the top item in the "In the news" digest:

"Venezuela takes over oil field operations from big firms."

Geopolitical instability and inefficient allocation of resources from state-run oil enterprises in Venezuela and other oil-producing countries are one factor in the rising cost of petroleum products. Unfortunately the way Chavez's May Day oil grab is being reported, it's little more than a footnote.

The Grammy Award-winning band “Rage Against the Machine” reunited after a seven-year hiatus to perform at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio, California, this weekend.

The always contoversial group took the opportunity on the occasion of their much-anticipated reunion to make some pretty vile statements about the Bush administration (video available here).

Not surprisingly, fans of the band actually set fire to American flags during the performance.

The potentially offensive remarks have been strategically placed after the break for those lacking the stomach for them as reported by The Gauntlet. Enter at your own risk:

On Tuesday, well known Bush hater Frank Rich appeared on liberal Stephanie Miller radio show. (Miller is being given a test run this week on MSNBC in the departed Don Imus’ spot.) Proving that there’s nothing the New York Times columnist can’t use to slam the President, Rich attacked Bush for not telling jokes at the White House Correspondents Dinner and members of the media for not rebelling against it:

Frank Rich: "The, uh, the general play where Bush stand up and says he is not going to do his usual comedy routine because of Virginia Tech, that’s outrageous and the press sits there and applauds."

A few years ago, the Left pulled several muscles exerting itself with the strange theory that the Public Broadcasting Service was lurching dangerously to the right. When Corporation for Public Broadcasting chairman Kenneth Tomlinson had the audacity not only to speak internal profanities (“fairness” and “balance”), but to try and build on them, it became clear to them that he was out of control and needed to be stopped.

Tomlinson made several small but significant steps toward balance on our taxpayer-subsidized airwaves, nudging the creation of two right-leaning talk programs – “Tucker Carlson Unfiltered” and “The Journal Editorial Report” – and both suffered from the TV equivalent of crib death. Liberals really erupted when they learned Tomlinson secretly hired someone to assess the political balance of some PBS and NPR programs. This initiative was doomed, not only because the internal bureaucracy would never tolerate it, but because proving liberal bias at PBS is beyond easy. It’s like proving Rosie O’Donnell has a liberal bias: is it really necessary to conduct a study?

Update: Video, audio links for interview below the jump.

It is rare for a mainstream media journalist to openly criticize the media’s coverage of a particular issue. But that is exactly what CNN’s Lou Dobbs did on Tuesday’s "American Morning." In an interview with co-host Kiran Chetry, Dobbs blasted the media’s coverage of illegal immigration, saying "They're selling an agenda. And they're not applying critical judgment. And critical judgment and skepticism is our job as journalists. We're talking about comprehensive immigration legislation as reform. We're using the word 'reform' as if it were true. There's no skepticism."

Dobbs’s interview was part of "American Morning’s" coverage of pro-illegal immigration rallies on May Day, the traditional socialist workers’ holiday. When asked if any progress had been made in the past year concerning illegal immigration, Dobbs said that "we're making, at the margin, progress, but it's at the margin, " and that there was some better enforcement at the border. He then criticized one of the Congressional immigration reform proposals, the Flake-Gutierrez immigration bill, calling it "an absurdity."

Surely, CNN doesn’t stand for Communist News Network. But CNN’s Soledad O’Brien went looking for the "grass roots" of the pro-illegal immigration movement in Chicago during Tuesday’s Your World Today at mid-day. She interviewed a man she described as "Shaun Harkin of the March 10th Movement." She did not describe him with ideological precision: he’s a fervent Leninist.

An instant Googling of "Shaun Harkin" quickly brought up an article from Socialist Worker Online, where "SHAUN HARKIN explains why the Russian revolutionary Lenin and the theory that Lenin developed about the rise of imperialism remains so relevant today." Harkin concluded: "The dynamics of imperialism that Lenin analyzed are still present. His approach continues to offer the best framework to understand imperialism -- and is an essential tool for revolutionaries today."

Newsweek’s April 30 article by Eleanor Clift recycled old gun-control mythology and misleading statements with a renewed call for something to be done in the wake of the Virginia Tech shooting. The article mixed the usual anti-gun talking points with some subtle pining for the good ol’ days of President Clinton’s Federal Assault Weapons Ban (AWB) that supposedly made the streets safer by taking the extra, extra, super-scary looking guns out the hands of all Americans (except for the criminals who obtained them illegally, of course). Clift starts off with one of the more ridiculous statements (emphasis mine throughout):

Rahm Emanuel was once a fierce gun-control advocate. As a top aide to Bill Clinton, he helped push the president's assault-weapons ban. At the time, Emanuel argued there was little reason for anyone to have a military-style weapon designed to kill as many people as possible in the shortest time.

With baseball season underway, Tony Snow today used a metaphor from America's pastime to knock out of the park NBC correspondent Andrea Mitchell's allegation that the U.S. is to blame for Cuba's economic woes.

As I noted here earlier today, Mitchell reported on MSNBC from Havana on the occasion of Cuba's May Day celebrations. Describing conditions in Cuba, as the country transitions from Fidel Castro to brother Raul, Mitchell claimed:

There have been no major problems, other than the continuing economic difficulties that of course this country faces because of the U.S. embargo, the economic embargo.

This NewsBuster participated in a conference call today with White House Press Secretary Tony Snow. Asked by me to comment on the Mitchell claim, Snow, flashing midseason form, observed:

http://prisonplanet....

JFK Murder Plot "Deathbed Confession" Aired On National Radio
Former CIA agent, Watergate conspirator E. Howard Hunt names the men who killed Kennedy

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Monday, April 30, 2007

The "deathbed confession" audio tape in which former CIA agent and Watergate conspirator E. Howard Hunt admits he was approached to be part of a CIA assassination team to kill JFK was aired this weekend - an astounding development that has gone completely ignored by the establishment media.

Saint John Hunt, son of E. Howard Hunt, appeared on the nationally syndicated Coast to Coast Live radio show on Saturday night to discuss the revelations contained in the tape.

Hunt said that his father had mailed cassette the tape to him alone in January 2004 and asked that it be released after his death. The tape was originally 20 minutes long but was edited down to four and a half minutes for the Coast to Coast broadcast. Hunt promises that the whole tape will be uploaded soon at his website.

Update/Video link at bottom.

Update at bottom with other blogs covering story.

The May 1 edition of "The View" marked the fourth anniversary of President Bush’s famous "mission accomplished" announcement with Rosie O’Donnell’s predictable rants against the war and the administration. The co-host mysteriously claimed Afghanistan had nothing to do with September 11 and downplayed the Al Qaeda threat, claiming it is simply a U.S. government scare tactic. Additionally, Rosie, with the aide of guest co-host Ricki Lake, followed Charles Rangel and Andy Rooney to assert that U.S. soldiers are not patriots, but losers who join out of desperation.

O’DONNELL: Wait, can I just say something? Why do people enlist in the Army?

RICKI LAKE: To get an education, and they're poor-

O’DONNELL: Thank you.

LAKE: -and that’s the only way to get one.

O’DONNELL: The vast majority– Yes, Elisabeth. It’s true!

Using the newly released George Tenet book and four year anniversary of the President's "Mission Accomplished" speech as a backdrop, NBC's Today show invited on Congressman John Murtha to talk about a troop pullout and even impeachment. During her interview Today co-host Meredith Vieira asked Murtha if the Democrats had a "fallback plan" against a Bush veto of their troop withdrawal bill and then followed that query by bringing up the ‘I' word as she pressed: "Is impeachment really on the table?"

The following questions came during a segment in the first half-hour of the May 1st Today show:

Vieira: "Well let's, let's look forward sir because there is a war funding bill that is gonna be before the President, that the, the Congress has handed him, and he has said he is going to veto it because it sets a timetable for the removal of troops from Iraq. So what is your plan when he does, indeed, veto this? What is your fallback plan?"

On the Tuesday edition of "Good Morning America," the ABC program used the fourth anniversary of President Bush’s "Mission Accomplished" speech to slam the "Bushian bravado" of an event that "this administration will never live down."

Correspondent Claire Shipman marveled at "how naive that banner looks four years later." The day after the President landed on the USS Lincoln aircraft carrier, however, GMA wasn't so prescient. ABC Anchor George Stephanopoulos labeled the speech an "A++," "well done" and seemed impressed with the "small poster that said ‘Mission Accomplished.’"

It goes without saying that Fox News’s Sean Hannity is never one to mince words, especially when the subject matter is something he feels passionately about.

In such instances, one better strap oneself in tightly, for you're in for a bumpy, no holds barred ride.

Such was certainly the case Sunday evening when the outspoken conservative did a ten minute segment on “Hannity’s America” (h/t Tim Graham) about how the Democrat Party has been taken hostage by extreme left-wing forces on the Internet (video available here).

First, Hannity addressed the recent blog posting by Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) on the website that last year got itself into a bit of a brouhaha for publishing a blackfaced picture of Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Connecticut):

Here's today's open thread. Oh, and in case you haven't noticed, I've made it easy for everyone to submit NB stories to your favorite social networking web sites. Just click the little icons for whichever site you want and submit.

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There's really only one problem for Cuba: those yanqui imperialists and the embargo they slapped on the country. Just ask Andrea Mitchell. The NBC correspondent is in Cuba today for the May Day festivities. Here's an excerpt from her conversation on MSNBC at 9:07 EDT this morning with host Contessa Brewer.

MSNBC HOST CONTESSA BREWER: Is there an expectation among the crowd there, a sense that Castro will return to power at some point?

NBC CORRESPONDENT ANDREA MITCHELL: Officials are pointing out, and it's certainly true from my visits here that the government runs, it's business as usual, that they have managed this succession rather well. Raul Castro is here today, he and other leaders are very much in charge. There have been no major problems, other than the continuing economic difficulties that of course this country faces because of the U.S. embargo, the economic embargo.

In 1995, Bill Clinton said this to a Houston fund-raising audience about the 1993 tax increase his administration is infamous for:

Probably there are people in this room who are still mad at me at that budget because you think I raised your taxes too much. It might surprise you to know that I think I raised them too much too.

John Edwards, on the other hand, must think that the Clinton Administration and the congress at the time raised taxes too little, because he said on Sunday that he wants to go beyond what was done in 1993 (link requires registration; HT Colorado Right):

It always amazes when the MSM congeals an entire presidential administration into a form that posits that every member of that administration is the president. Like when they claim that "Bush Lied" about the faulty intelligence that led to the presentation to the UN to garner support for the action in Iraq given by then Secretary of State Colin Powell. Yet, when the MSM wants to exonerate a single member of any particular administration, suddenly the President is forgotten as a part of the discussion and the individual administration official the press is currently in love with is held as a man responsible for his own decisions and exonerated on that basis.

This week's new media darling is former CIA chief George Tenet, one of the worst directors of the CIA we've seen in decades. The MSM have suddenly found him to be an honorable and serious man because of his newly published Bush bashing tell-all.

Less than a week after Havana-based CBS News producer Portia Siegelbaum trumpeted on CBSNews.com how “thanks to the socialist island’s free health care system -- which emphasizes preventive medicine -- Cubans enjoy a very high life expectancy," Monday's CBS Evening News salivated over the anticipated May Day return of Fidel Castro as Lara Logan confidently relayed the views of “Cubans” and “people here” in the repressive totalitarian state supposedly “enraged” by the U.S. release of a man convicted of blowing up a Cuban airliner in 1976.

Anchor Katie Couric heralded: “In Cuba tonight, a lot of anticipation. Reports there say Fidel Castro may lead tomorrow's May Day celebration.” From Havana, Lara Logan asserted: “Just as Cubans are hoping that Fidel Castro will make his first public appearance since falling ill nine months ago, people here have been enraged by the re-emergence of one of his oldest and most hated enemies. Luis Posada Carriles is to Cubans their Osama bin Laden.” Speaking for all Cubans, Logan insisted that “Cubans want him to face terrorism charges. Outraged, they've taken to the streets here in silent protest day after day.” After video of those protesters of supposed free-will, Logan issued another generality: “People here accuse the U.S. of hypocrisy, asking how America can condemn countries who harbor terrorists while refusing to hand over Cuba's most wanted terrorist.” She offered no soundbites or names to support her assumption.