Doubts about the veracity of highly sensationalized accounts from Iraq written by a pseudonymous person claiming to be an American soldier have finally compelled the liberal New Republic magazine to launch an investigation, the New York Times reports:

The author, who used the pen name Scott Thomas, has written three articles for the magazine since February, describing gruesome incidents in Iraq. Last week, The Weekly Standard questioned the veracity of the New Republic articles and invited readers with knowledge about the military or Baghdad to comment.

In the lead-up to Monday night’s YouTube debate with the Democrat presidential candidates, CNN ran prime-time specials previewing videos that might be featured during the debate, and most of those featured came from the liberal side. It should be no surprise then that video clips featured left-wing clips by almost a 3 to 1 margin versus the conservative clips - 17 liberal clips to 6 conservative clips, out of a total of 38 video question clips.

Video of 10 of the liberal questions (6:20): Real (4.53 MB) or Windows (3.79 MB), plus MP3 audio (2.15 MB).

During the course of tonight's CNN/YouTube Dem debate, Barack Obama got off this zinger at Hillary's expense.

BARACK OBAMA: One thing I have to say about Senator Clinton,s comments a couple moments ago: I think it's terrific that she is asking for [Iraq withdrawal] plans from the Pentagon [A+ for condescension there, Barack!], and I think the Pentagon response was ridiculous. But what I also know is that the time for us to ask how we were going to get out of Iraq was before we went in. And that is something that too many of us [like you, Hillary] failed to do. We failed to do it.

The screencap shows Hillary's reaction. What was going through her mind?

Appearing live on the "Hardball Plaza," leftist film-maker Michael Moore pitched his movie "Sicko" and called for Bush and Cheney's impeachment, all in front of live audience and sympathetic "Hardball" host Chris Matthews. On tonight's edition of "Hardball," Matthews devoted the entire hour to Moore and praised "Sicko" as "amazing film-making," wondered why Americans were afraid of "socialized" medicine and stood by as Moore charged Bush and Cheney should be led out of the White House on a "perp walk" and be imprisoned for their war crimes.

The following are some of the more over-the-top moments from the July 23rd edition of "Hardball:"

Moore charges Bush and Cheney with war crimes:

Update (02:44 | July 24): Michele at ReformedChicksBlabbing has some video clips of questions and the responses from candidates.

Update (00:52 EDT | July 24): For an overview of the overwhelming left-wing skew of the debate questions, check out Matthew Balan's blog post, complete with video clips, here.

I'll be live-blogging the YouTube debate. Fell free to do the same in the comments field.

At least you can do so with a stiff drink in hand. [sigh]

SEE BELOW for closing observations and some links to other live-blogs of the debate.

7:01: That was a lame introduction.

7:02: "What you're about to see is untried."-- Anderson Cooper.

Here's another item for the "Bush Won't Win Praise in the Media By Going Soft on Gitmo" file.

It was posted on Friday, pre-presidential colonoscopy (hence the snark about the Cheney administration), but I just came across it today.

In "Bush's Anti-Torture Executive Order! Uhm, Not So Fast," Time.com Washington editor Ana Marie Cox laments that the new Bush administration interrogation directives for Gitmo detainees will still allow sleep deprivation (emphasis mine):

Something tells me Karen Ogden doesn't have a future in health care reporting in any large mainstream media publication or network. In the July 23 edition of her paper, the Great Falls Tribune editor took a sobering look at painkiller addictions and the black market for the narcotics on American Indian reservations in Montana. "Free" socialized medicine and the long wait times for surgery were partly to blame, she found. :

A perfect storm of factors is feeding the pill problem: grinding poverty coupled with handsome prices for contraband pills (a methadone tablet sells for up to $20 on the Blackfeet Reservation), a long history of addiction in American Indian communities and the fact there is no charge for patient visits or prescriptions at IHS clinics.

Some allege that crushing workloads for IHS doctors and political pressure on physicians from tribal officials and relatives — a function of life in close-knit reservation communities — also are to blame.

Another culprit, they say, is a budget crisis within the IHS that is forcing patients nationwide to wait months and often years for hip replacements, knee repairs and other badly needed surgeries.

Is Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas growing weary of the vitriol being expressed at his blog?

It appears so, as without explaining what incidents precipitated the need for such, Moulitsas posted a warning to his readers Monday referring to "nasty rhetoric" that is "rampant in the primary war diaries."

Maybe Charles Johnson was prescient Sunday when he wrote, "Just doesn't look right to be dissing the military when Kos is trying so hard to be the voice of the Democratic Party."

With that in mind, Markos began his "With Us or Against Us" posting (emphasis added throughout):

At some point in time, it seems logical that the name of the Democrat Party must be changed to the Do As I Say, Not As I Do Party.

In another fine example of such hypocrisy, it appears that despite claims by Al Gore that all of the CO2 emitted into the air as a result of the production of his schlockumentary "An Inconvenient Truth" were offset with carbon credits, nothing can be further from the truth.

As Steve Milloy reported Thursday (emphasis added throughout):

Just a moment ago, radio host Rush Limbaugh was blasting the mainstream media's notion that the YouTube debates represent a revolution in American presidential debates.

Not so, says Limbaugh, at least in terms of the content of the questions asked. They're still as inane and moronic, or brilliant (in rare circumstances) as they've always been because they're the same inance, moronic, or brilliant (rare circumstances) people asking them.

Instead, Limbaugh insists, we are seeing a revolution in media technology being confused for a nascent political revolution.

Now couple that, the notion that "new voices" are being heard in the YouTube debates ,with the wild left-wing skew we've documented at NewsBusters, and you see the media's liberal bias at work in staging the 2008 election in terms of liberal issue battlegrounds.

In the July 22 Washington Post, writer Monica Hesse interviewed Ron DeFore of the SUV Owners of America (SUVOA), for her Style section front-pager, "A Man Who Wants SUVs to Get More R-E-S-P-E-C-T."

But far from respect, Hesse's interview at turns shifted from an almost "Daily Show"-like mockery to an unqualified parroting of liberal talking points. You can find her interview here, but I found these three questions particularly to be cheap shots:

In 1992, Bill Clinton successfully used a campaign strategy of continually focusing attention on the supposedly poor economy thinking that Americans typically vote with their wallets.

Of course, most intelligent people know that the recession actually ended in early 1991, and that this strategy would have failed miserably had the media not been complicit, and, instead, honestly reported economic realities.

Regardless, it appears media at this point are concerned that a strong economy and rising stock market might undermine Democrat presidential candidates in November 2008.

With that in mind, the New York Times' Tom Redburn wrote an article Saturday that diminished the importance of the economy in the upcoming elections, threw cold water on the premise that presidents have any impact on economic developments, and told readers to be much more concerned with - wait for it - the war in Iraq.

In fact, the article actually began (h/t Lynn Davidson, emphasis added throughout):

"Charges Against a Star Linebacker Raises Questions About Justice" appears at first to be a run-of-the-mill example of politically correct crime coverage in the New York Times. Sports reporter Thayer Evans hinted at racism in a criminal investigation of a black college football player, Oklahoma State Cowboys linebacker Chris Collins, arrested on sexual assault for raping a 12 year-old. But then one remembers the Times' coverage of the Duke lacrosse case, and the politically correct becomes pathetic.

"In May 2004, Collins and another man were arrested and charged with sexually assaulting an intoxicated 12-year-old girl at a hotel in Texarkana, Tex., during an after-prom party. Two other men were charged in December 2005. Collins pleaded not guilty in March, after being indicted by a grand jury in December 2004.

Be honest: when you saw the news Sunday that a woman was going to be president in the next season of the hit series "24," you smelled something akin to when ABC made a similar announcement concerning "Commander in Chief," and CBS hired Katie Couric.

Well, according to Politico, the failure of both is actually not good news for Hillary Clinton (h/t Hot Air).

But, before we get there, what was also fascinating about this piece was how the producer of "Commander in Chief" admitted a political goal behind casting Geena Davis as the first female president (emphasis added throughout):

Monday, Monday...

The ever present boogeyman that, in the media's eyes, is global warming, reared its ugly head again today. Reporting from England on the rising flood waters there, NBC's Keith Miller, on this morning's 'Today' show, offered the following observation:

Keith Miller: "The damage from the flood waters is already estimated to be more than $100 million. Roads are out, the electricity supply has failed and the water supply is now contaminated. The people of Britain are all asking the same question today, could this be global warming?"

Outrageously, Newsweek has published a so-called "special report" in which Muslim Americans are called "one of this country's greatest strengths," but, Newsweek worries, that they are now "vulnerable as never before." Yes, America, as far as Newsweek is concerned it is YOU, not Islam, that is the problem.

As to the first claim, Newsweek offers not a single reason in their report why Muslims might be one of our "greatest strengths," but of the claim of how "vulnerable" they are, Newsweek drones on and on. Naturally, Newsweek puts the onus on Americans to bend over backward for Muslims, but doesn't once take Muslims to task for their barbarities and radicalism.

For all of those lefties who were enraged at Howard Kurtz granting publicity to conservative blogger Michelle Malkin a few months ago, they can now rest easy. On the front page of Sunday’s Washington Post, reporter Nick Miroff warned that a conservative "mouse-pushing crackpot" was tapping into ire against illegal immigrants – or more precisely, Miroff writes that he can’t be dismissed as a crackpot if he’s actually shaping public policy in suburban Prince William County. (This is the same Nick Miroff who couldn’t find the Democrat party label on the local mayor charged with running a brothel.)

The targeted blogger was Greg Letiecq, who runs a blog called Black Velvet Bruce Li. Consider as you read Miroff’s copy: can you imagine the Post using words like "crackpot" and "extremist" to describe positively anyone who stands on the opposing side to Letiecq? Would anyone who thinks the borders of the United States should be erased and that capitalism needs to be eradicated in America be subjected to a front-page story like this, with a message of: "Don’t look now, but hateful blogging kooks are running your local government!" (Here’s a hi