"I Guess The P-I Missed This, Too," says Ed Morrissey at the invaluable Captain's Quarters blog, referring to information in an ABC News that a number of suspicious incidents have been reported on ferries in the state of Washington, according to the FBI, and the FBI has issued warnings to local law enforcement and alerted the Coast Guard to heighten their awareness in the area.

ABC reported:

There have been a number of suspicious incidents this summer aboard Washington state ferries, which prompted the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Coast Guard to increase security along the ferry lines and to issue a warning to law enforcement.

Award winning journalist Robert Fisk discusses his "issues" with the official narrative of 9/11. Each issue is the core of 9/11 truth. Looks like his nack for journalism is paying off for 9/11 truth.

http://news.independent.co.uk/fisk/article2893860.ece

I'm going to get an early jump on this, because it seems like it might be fun to hear some input.  When Dr. Ron Paul finally drops out (or is deselected as primary candidate), what will the reaction be of his loyal subjects?  I've got a few ideas of my own, but i'm interested in what everyone thinks on this one.

This is the political urban legend that just won't die. On Glenn Beck's August 23 show, longtime Democratic strategist and media advisor Peter Fenn perpetuated the media-rooted myth that George HW Bush was amazed at how regular grocery-store scanners worked, which fed into the media themes that he was in a “bubble” and “out of touch” with how Regular Joes lived.

The problem is that story turned out to be a fabrication started by the New York Times.

With all the fuss made over the 300 millionth American, the U.S. Census Bureau enjoyed an unaccustomed moment in the limelight as the work done by this government agency is seldom considered glamorous enough to warrant much coverage in the media.

Article One, Section Two of the U.S. Constitution authorizes an enumeration of the population to be taken every ten years. The only purpose for this tabulation authorized by the Constitution is to figure our how to divvy up the House of Representatives.

But while the Founding Fathers instituted the census as a tool to safeguard the liberties of the Republic by making sure each person is properly represented numerically in the national legislature, as with many of the other institutions devised by these innovative political thinkers, this one is also being used to undermine the very nature of freedom itself.

“Overkill” from “right-wing radio,” in criticizing Senator Hillary Clinton, is her “secret weapon” that will “transform her into a figure of sympathy by a majority of people” -- and presumably help elect her President -- syndicated columnist and PBS NewsHour political analyst Mark Shields contended Friday night. On Inside Washington, a weekly panel show produced by ABC's Washington, DC affiliate which airs it on Sunday mornings after it first runs Friday night at 8:30pm on DC's PBS affiliate, WETA-TV channel 26, Shields argued:

“I think the secret weapon for Senator Clinton, if she is the Democratic nominee, is not simply Rudy's shortcomings, the perceived shortcomings of her opponent, I think you'll see on the part of right-wing radio -- conservative talk, however you want to call it -- such overkill that it will make her, transform her into a figure of sympathy by a majority of people.”

NPR's Nina Totenberg then chimed in: “That happened in her first Senate run.”

Video clip (23 secs): Real (750 KB) or Windows Media (850 KB), plus MP3 audio (140 KB)

The National Football League has finally acted, suspending former Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick indefinitely without pay in the wake of Vick admitting that he was the primary funding behind the dog-fighting operation run from his property. The question now is- what will the NAACP and Vick's media enablers do?

What a difference a headline makes. An alert tipster in Minnesota sent the Media Research Center a clip from the August 10 St. Paul Pioneer Press, which included this scary-sounding headline over a story about a Food and Drug Administration report: “Heartburn Drugs Subject of Federal Safety Inquiry.”

The story, distributed by the Los Angeles Times News Service, was about whether two commonly prescribed drugs, Nexium and Prilosec, might cause heart problems. Maybe, suggested writer Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar: “Federal regulators Thursday said they have opened a safety investigation of two popular heartburn drugs — Nexium, marketed as the ‘purple pill,’ and Prilosec, its older chemical cousin — after receiving clinical data that appeared to link them to serious heart problems.”

Friday’s earlier post on CNN’s "God's Warriors" hinted that CNN and Christiane Amanpour gave Muslim "fundamentalists" in the U.S. sympathetic treatment, while they showed discomfort towards Christian conservatives. The original intention was to give examples of each in that post, but the distinction is so clear and important that it deserves its own separate post.

Bob Knight of MRC’s Culture and Media Institute detailed some examples of Amanpour’s biased treatment of Christian conservatives in his latest column. She spent the last 20 minutes of "God’s Christian Warriors" profiling the Battlecry Campaign of Ron Luce, an evangelical Christian who runs a larger organization called Teen Mania Ministries.

As Knight pointed out, Amanpour "couldn’t quite conceal her hostility" towards Luce. A partial transcript from this segment showing the full context of her rather-pointed questions clearly demonstrated this hostility.

Video (1:39): Real (1.21 MB) or Windows (1.03 MB), plus MP3 audio (759 kB).

Original caption:

In this photo provided by CBS, White House political adviser Karl Rove talks with Bob Schieffer before appearing on CBS's 'Face the Nation' in Washington, Sunday, Aug. 19, 2007.

First Mike Gallagher(sp?)

http://www.youtube.c...

And he's honest about the media bias against Paul & Tancredo! Great job,
fantastic interview, sir!! I wonder what they're afraid of, too.... :) We're just mostly having fun so far in our meetups, with silly stuff like a contribution competition. We have yet to get serious and start working hard!

Next, conservative California Senator Tom McClintock interviews Dr. Paul in two parts.

http://www.youtube.c... and then

http://www.youtube.c...

You know it's bad when your own ombudsman compares you to Richard Nixon, or suggests that you need an ombudsman devoted only to you. But that's exactly what PBS Ombud Michael Getler has been pushed to with the latest Bill Moyers "editorial", which was covered by our own Noel Sheppard.

Set aside for the moment that in a tirade Moyers referred to the Commander in Chief as "an intellectually incurious draft-averse naughty playboy in a flight jacket with chewing tobacco in his back pocket". That's the PBS equivalent of 'fair and balanced'. At question here is whether or not Karl Rove is a religious man. Moyers postulates that he is not, going off various dubious sources (that Moyers referred to as "circulating reports") such as the outright conjecture of bloggers. Church-attending Karl claims Moyers is wrong. Who are you going to believe?

Getler rightly points out that this type of sourcing "is not up to his [Moyer] standards", which apparently are already far below average journalistic standards. He also points out that, again, Moyers has violated PBS's Editorial Standards and Policies which require that when "a program, segment, or other content is devoted to opinion or commentary, the principle of transparency requires that it be clearly labeled as such" and "should identify who is responsible for the views being presented."

Continue reading the ombud report if you like, but I found it a tiring report of the obvious: Bill Moyers is, as Dan Rather would say - a partisan political operative, cloaked in the auspices of a journalist taking tax money from the public against the will of the majority.

In last night’s installment of the six-hour, three-part series God’s Warriors, CNN reporter Christiane Amanpour loads the deck to portray conservative Christians as dangerously at odds with science. She first uses an interview with maverick Rich Cizik of the National Association of Evangelicals, who has been criticized by many Christian leaders for his embrace of man-made Global Warming theory as fact, then turns to a family of homeschoolers.

Here’s a partial transcript:

It should come as a surprise to nobody that revenue is down again for the Tribune Company, owner of news properties such as the LA Times and Chicago Tribune. This time the bleeding stopped at 5.9 percent. Circulation was down 5.4 percent. Classifieds are down 18.2 percent. Retail advertising sales are down 6 percent.

But it's not their fault, of course. This time the blame is "due to difficult year-over-year comparisons." Though one must wonder if their circulation would continue to have dropped had they heeded my suggestion that newspapers "get rid of the bias, the America-hating columnists, the socialist editorials, and the reporters pushing a gay/lesbian/transgendered/illegal alien/pro-abortion/anti-God/anti-gun agenda?"

Or they could continue doing what they're doing.

If you're a soldier serving in Iraq and have a downbeat view of the troop surge, Time's Joe Klein is itching to have the Left adopt you as a poster boy. But should you be a soldier in Iraq and you think the surge is working, well, obviously you're just a tool of those vile neocons at The Weekly Standard, willing to "trash" fellow soldiers.:

Christiane Amanpour’s six-hour miniseries "God’s Warriors" reflects less of the reality of "fundamentalist" monotheists - Jews, Muslims, and Christians - and more of liberals’ attitudes about these faiths. It is clear, given how CNN and Amanpour covered each faith, that they have sympathy towards Muslims in the U.S., "concern" with the Jewish settlers in the West Bank, and are uncomfortable towards the beliefs and practices of Christian evangelicals.

Tuesday night’s "God’s Jewish Warriors" focused on the cause of the "right-wing" Jewish settlers. The term "right wing" is used seven times to describe the settlers and/or their supporters in Israel and in the United States, and "fundamentalist/-ism" was used three times, once in reference to Christian supporters of the settlers in the U.S. On Wednesday night’s "God’s Muslim Warriors," "fundamentalist/-ism" was the more prevalent term, used 11 times. "Right wing" is used twice, only to describe Geert Wilders, a member of the Dutch Parliament.

A partial transcript of the first occasion Amanpour used the term "right-wing" to describe Wilders:

In a recent blog post CBS’s Wyatt Andrews gushes about Massachusetts new health care plan that requires people to purchase health care. Can’t afford it? Well naturally the state will pick up the tab.

Andrews begins by discussing his trip to Fenway Park, home of the Boston Red Sox, and how “sitting directly behind one of the dozens of beer stands” was a kiosk promoting the new plan. Andrews explains it like this:

It reads like an anti-landlord piece from the Great Depression, but left-wing economist Dean Baker is actually trying to force people to become landlords.

Baker wrote an August 20 piece on Commondreams.org urging Congress to eliminate foreclosures and let homeowners live in those houses indefinitely.

You read that right (or left), Baker says the heck with the 5th Amendment protection against being "deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." If someone borrowed too much or won't pay the mortgage, that's OK with Baker, the co-director of the left-wing economic think tank the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

If you had any question as to how hot the climate change debate is getting in governments around the world, all you need do is look at our neighbor to the north for answers.

On Thursday, members of Canada's Liberal Party threatened Prime Minister Stephen Harper with a fall election if he didn't change course on his global warming policies.

I kid you not.

The Montreal Gazette reported Friday (emphasis added throughout):

Every day on the news in recent months there have been stories about the plight of the distressed home owner who has been unable to pay his mortgage and is forced into foreclosure. It’s portrayed as grim and ripe for government action – whether it is regulation or even government handouts.

“Now we switch to the housing market and the U.S. economy and this is a big story,” said NBC “Nightly News” anchor Brian Williams on August 23. “Listen to this number on mortgage foreclosures in this country. They’re up 93 percent nationwide last month from the same period last year. This situation is dire. It’s creating a lot of anxiety about how that’s going to affect a great many homeowners and the economy as a whole.”