Friday's CBS Evening News plugged its special on Walter Cronkite with a story, as introduced by Katie Couric, about a "journalist who stood up to the Commander-in-Chief" during a time of "another unpopular war," as Couric was transitioning from a story about the debate over Iraq War funding. Couric was referring to Cronkite's decision in February 1968 to declare on the air that America would have to negotiate without victory to end the Vietnam War.

After correspondent Jim Axelrod filed a report on the latest effort by Congressional Democrats to put conditions on Iraq War funding, which ended with Axelrod opining that President Bush has an incentive to reach a deal soon because of the President's low approval rating over the "unpopular war," Couric drew a comparison to the Vietnam War by introducing the Cronkite piece referring to "another unpopular war." Couric: "And now we want to take you back 40 years to another unpopular war and to a journalist who stood up to the Commander-in-Chief. It was Vietnam, the President was Lyndon Johnson, and that journalist? CBS News correspondent Walter Cronkite." (Transcript follows)

I know. It’s only a cartoon. However, could these folks have been any more obvious about who they support for president?

NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” showed an animated short on May 19 depicting every possible 2008 presidential candidate, from both sides of the aisle, sitting down and having a tell-all chat with Oprah Winfrey.

As the frontrunners one by one told Oprah secrets that would surely cost them votes in the election, one thing became perfectly clear: Hillary Clinton was the only serious candidate that avoided saying anything even remotely embarrassing (video available here, h/t Allah at Hot Air).

By far the biggest target was Rudy Giuliani, Hillary’s main foe, who spoke up a total of ten times (the reader is warned that some of this stuff is pretty raw):

Sometimes you read something by a member of the MSM that is just so elitist, someone whose arrogance is so amazing, that it is hard to believe it was written by a member of a democratic society.

We MSM watchdogs love to poke our fingers in the eyes of the homogeneously leftist elitists in the media establishment assailing them for their pervasive assumptions of their own superiority. We don’t often, however, get to see them come right out and say that they truly do think they are better and smarter then the rest of us mere commoners. Usually they are sly enough not to show their arrogance so obviously, leaving it unsaid but broadly hinted at. But, once in a while their egos get the better of them and they let that upturned nose snort just enough at the rest of us to let us know where our “place” in life is.

This is one of those times.

Today's funny headline, from The Washington Post: "Bush Is 'the Worst in History' In Foreign Relations, Carter Says." The AP doesn't not seem to see what's funny in these remarks: this clown couldn't manage a hostage rescue in the desert, and he's denouncing this president? The article had no reference to Carter's foreign policy failures as president.

AP reported "The denunciation of a sitting president was unprecedented for Carter, a biographer said." That biographer was Douglas Brinkley, who wrote a very favorable book on Carter's post-presidency years. But the tone doesn't sound all that different from Carter's 2004 speech to the Democrat convention, when he kvetched that all the post-9/11 good will "has been squandered by a virtually unbroken series of mistakes and miscalculations."

Air America, the liberal radio network that launched to great fanfare and media accolades has gone bankrupt, foundered in the ratings and done nothing for its "celebrity" hosts. That hasn't stopped the network from being aborted though:

Air America is scheduling a high-profile lineup of presidential candidates, political players and celebrities for next week as part of the liberal talk network's "relaunch" after suffering financial woes.

Democratic candidates Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards, along with luminaries like Robert Redford, Paul Newman and Gloria Steinem, are among the more than 30 guests scheduled, the network announced Thursday.

New shows are also being added to the schedule, featuring famous correspondents and hosts, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Arianna Huffington and Bob Kerrey. The network also redesigned its Web site, where hosts will regularly blog along with a newly-hired blogger, Nancy Scola.

Republican Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the subject of persistent presidential speculation despite his denials of any interest, was to tape his interview Thursday, facing questions from a former political foe, Mark Green.

You think the blogosphere is a hostile place? Well, you ain’t seen nuttin’ yet.

Internet Haganah, a global network dedicated to identifying and confronting terrorist activities over the Internet, reported Sunday that a Palestinian forum named al-Ommh was running a rather disgraceful poll.

At issue is whether or not Alan Johnston, the BBC member who was captured in Gaza in March and is still being held by the terrorist group Jaish al-Islam, should be executed (h/t LGF).

The results reported by IH were despicable (emphasis added):

The New York Times explored Hillary Clinton’s service on the Wal-Mart Board of Directors in the Sunday newspaper. Reporter Michael Barbaro employed a typical focus on inoculating liberals against conservative attack: "Her years on the Wal-Mart board, from 1986 to 1992, gave her an unusual tutorial in the ways of American business — a credential that could serve as an antidote to Republican efforts to portray her as an enemy of free markets and an advocate for big government."

Citing a board of directors credential is hardly proof you’re not an advocate of big government. Just think of all the major corporations – including NBC-owning General Electric – that eagerly allied themselves with the Clinton tax and health plans in 1993. Major corporations and big government are often the coziest of allies. Barbaro sinks into the usual template about how this shows how Hillary the Trailblazing Idealist is an odd match for Hillary the Get-Along-to-Go-Along Pragmatist:

Have you noticed that most of the articles you see that are skeptical about man’s role in climate change come from foreign publications based in countries like Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada?

Why do you think that is?

Are the American press too emotionally attached to the issue -- and, in particular, the chief spokesman, soon-to-be-Dr. Al Gore -- to even consider the possibility that the debate isn't over, and that their role as journalists is supposed to be to further discussion rather than squelch it?

While you ponder, an editor for Australia’s The Age, Melanie Griffin, published an absolutely delicious article Sunday slamming the upcoming "Live Earth" concerts about to be thrown in the name of global warming alarmism (emphasis added throughout):

Here’s something you don’t see every day: three media members – two from liberal press outlets – agreeing that Fox News actually did something right.

Yet, that’s what happened on CNN’s “Reliable Sources” Sunday, as host Howard Kurtz and his guests discussed the Republican debates aired Tuesday.

Kurtz began:

Let’s face it, a lot of people expected Fox to go easy on the Republicans. Did that happen?

National Review’s David Frum was first up, and, not so surprisingly, raved:

If you believe the hype from the open-borders crowd about how illegal immigrants "are doing jobs other won't do," you would have to wonder how this ever happened (the following is from a May 11 company press release):

Swift & Company Announces Return of Standard Staffing Levels at All Four Domestic Beef Processing Facilities

Pork Processing Facilities Resumed Normal Production in March

Swift & Company today reported its return to standard staffing levels at all four domestic beef processing facilities after the detention and removal, on December 12, 2006, of approximately 950 Swift Beef employees by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement ("ICE") division.

The December 2006 ICE event also involved two Swift Pork processing facilities. As the Company announced on April 10, 2007, Swift's domestic pork operations returned to normal levels in March 2007. ICE detained and removed a total of nearly 1,300 Swift Beef and Swift Pork employees during the December 2006 event.

A terse Associated Press story on the announcement that gained very little circulation made sure to remind us that "Operations at Swift plants in Colorado, Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, Texas and Hyrum, Utah, were suspended for several hours on Dec. 12 while immigration agents arrested 1,217 workers. No company managers have been charged."

Somehow, AP "forgot" to tell us that, as reported by the Greeley, Colorado Tribune the previous week (requires free registration), that at just one of the facilities involved:

Here’s something that is almost a metaphysical certitude: no major American newspaper, in the midst of all the current global warming hysteria, would dare do a front-page feature article questioning the merits of Al Gore’s schlockumentary “An Inconvenient Truth.”

Yet, there it was Saturday, covering almost two-thirds of the front page of Canada’s National Post, right smack in the middle, with a big picture of the Global Warmingist-in-Chief, surrounded by the shocking headline:

Even Climate Change Experts Say Many of the Claims in Al Gore’s Film Are Wrong. 

So How Did it Become Required Classroom Viewing?

Think you’ll see that some day on the front page of the New York Times, Washington Post, or USA Today?

While you ponder, the article was just as skeptical (emphasis added throughout):

Kimberley Strassel's OpinionJournal.com column about coal-mine operator Robert E. Murray of Murray Energy is important on a number of levels.

You haven't heard of Robert E. Murray? That's not surprising.

If there were an open dialog instead of continual blather about "settled science" when it comes to supposedly human-induced "climate change" and "global warming" (two concepts I like to collectively refer to as "globaloney"), Murray would have visibility. But, as Strassel writes, a different "climate," the political one, appears to be keeping him largely out of the public eye, despite his best efforts to break through.

You see, Robert Murray is a coal-company executive who has first-hand experience with what will happen on a much broader scale if the radical changes envisioned by Al Gore and others (whom I like to refer to as "globalarmists") ever get enacted:

On the CBS News website Public Eye, newly minted CBS man Jeff Greenfield saw no danger that the 2008 campaign will be drenched with a liberal bias, even though he admits that "most members of the so-called mainstream media, undoubtedly, in the voting booth, vote Democratic." He pulls out a familiar argument: when liberal losers lose, it’s easy to argue that they weren’t beneficiaries of liberal media bias: "But in my view the danger of bias does not lie in political coverage. I mean, ask Al Gore and John Kerry if they were the beneficiary of a poodle press. They were treated very critically – appropriately."

Before we address Gore and Kerry coverage, let’s make an obvious point: the Public Eye site was developed to help undo the damage that CBS’s horrendous and sloppy anti-Bush bias on the "draft dodging" charge in the fall of 2004. Greenfield ought to at least tip his skeptic’s hat toward that example before serving up his pooh-pooh platter.

Politico's Mike Allen gave readers a peek at excerpts of "The Reagan Diaries," set to hit bookstore shelves on Tuesday, May 22.

Well before the Media Research Center was conceived in 1987, the Gipper was watching the media's liberal biases and recording his "frustration with the press," Allen noted:

One of the dominant themes is his frustration with the press.

April 22, 1982: “Last night CBS did a special 1 hour documentary (Bill Moyers) on 4 cases of poverty and illness they laid to our ec. program. It was a thoroughly dishonest, demagogic, cheap shot.”

March 11, 1983: “Lou Cannon’s story in the Washington Post. It was a vicious series of falsehoods and I was mad as h—l.” (The lead of the front-page story, written with David Hoffman, was: “The resignation of Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Anne M. Burford was carefully orchestrated by White House and other administration officials who had to persuade a ‘stubborn and defiant’ President Reagan, as well as Burford, that her departure was politically essential, administration sources said yesterday.”)

Oct. 30, 1983: “Watched the Sunday talk shows – subject Lebanon & Grenada. The press is trying to give this the Vietnam treatment but I don’t think the people will buy it. They’re still whining because we didn’t take them on a guided tour the 1st day we were on Grenada. No mention of the fact that we’ve flown 180 of them onto the Island today.”

The Fairness Doctrine, the law that effectively put the kibosh on political talk radio for a number of years, might be coming back if congressional Democrats have their way. According to Fred Thompson, this turn of events was prompted in part by the failure of Air America radio:

The real issue here is not what you “can” see or hear — which is what the Fairness Doctrine was about originally. It’s what you’re “choosing” to see or hear.

Insiders say it was the collapse of the radio station “Air America” that led to this attempt to retool the Fairness Doctrine as a form of de facto censorship. I guess the idea is that, if you can’t compete in the world of ideas, you pass a law that forces radio stations to air your views. In effect, it would force a lot of radio stations to drop some talk show hosts — because they would lose money providing equal airtime to people who can’t attract a market or advertisers.

Honestly, the arrogance of some Hollywood liberals knows no bounds. As they live in their million dollar mansions, and jet-set around the world in a manner that 99.99 percent of the population can’t fathom, these folks have the gall to tell others how they should alter their lives for the benefit of the planet.

The most recent example is Leonardo DiCaprio, the 32-year-old actor that has absolutely no formal training in geology, climatology, meteorology, or anything in any way related to complex earth sciences.

In fact, in the picture to the right, DiCaprio could easily be answering a question about just how much education he has in these or related subjects, as according to Wikipedia, Leo never attended college.

Yet, he has the unmitigated audacity to claim in his new film that if we don’t listen to him and other scientifically uneducated folks like soon-to-be-Dr. Al Gore, we’re all going to die.

As reported by The London Paper (emphasis added throughout):