Thirty-five years after Roe v. Wade, the pro-life movement faces a new challenge: biotechnology. The first human biotech issue, embryonic stem-cell research, looks like an easy call.

Thus begins this NY Times article but you may be surprised

The argument is brave but risky. Shifting the pro-life case from religion to science puts it at the mercy of scientific discovery, with all the attendant surprises. Indeed, the human program turns out to be quite complicated. It discredits the authors’ absolutism.

As NewsBusters readers are fully aware, MSNBC's David Shuster has apologized and been suspended for asking a guest on Thursday's "Tucker," "[D]oesn't it seem like Chelsea [Clinton's] sort of being pimped out in some weird sort of way?"

As if that wasn't enough, on Friday evening's "Countdown," host Keith Olbermann also apologized (video available here):

David has been suspended and remains only for me to apologize without limit to President Clinton and to Ms. Clinton on behalf of MSNBC. We are literally, dreadfully sorry.

If MSNBC is so sorry for Shuster's use of this phrase, shouldn't they be suspending Olbermann for a similar comment he made about President Bush and Gen. David Petraeus on September 20 (video available here courtesy of our friend Johnny Dollar, relevant section begins 55 seconds in, although readers are strongly encouraged to watch the entire delicious piece):

There is an update on the ongoing saga of the New York Times using an outspoken critic of Guantanamo to help write an article regarding prisoners held there. Andy Worthington, the writer, defends himself here.

My last post for background here. 

It seems Mr. Worthington does not see his profound activism regarding Guantanamo as "outspoken." Writing a book about it called "The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison," doesn't promote a distinct outspoken point of view? Please.

The Daily Kos defends Worthington in the idea that it is so mainstream to believe the way Worthington does about Guantanamo, that is silly to expect the New York Times to have to point out Worthington's bias. 

The newest update to a study published in the British medical journal, the Lancet, claims that 655,000 Iraqis have been killed since the U.S. invaded Iraq. This absurd claim has been hailed around the world as evidence of the evil American empire's murderous reign in the Mid East. But it turns out that the entire study is not only filled with lies, the creators of the study even tried to hide the fact that George Soros funded the thing.

MSM sources like the AP and the Washington Post, among many others, highlighted the report lending it credence when it came out last month but few of those news outlets revealed the source of the study's funding. While most did reveal that the study was "controversial," few went into just how far off from the truth the details of this study are.

The real facts, however, are beginning to come out.

Please, tell me what this smirky guy is apologizing for? Why is he being suspended again? Oh, because he used a politically incorrect, and possibly derogatory term towards a Clinton.

Video of David Shuster groveling for forgiveness here.

MSNBC says it has temporarily suspended anchor David Shuster from all NBC news broadcasts — except to offer his on-air apology for what he said about Chelsea Clinton.

Shuster outraged the Clinton campaign by saying on the air that the campaign had "pimped out" the Clintons' daughter, when they had her place phone calls to party superdelegates on her mother's behalf.

In a conference call with reporters, Clinton communications director Howard Wolfson on Friday excoriated MSNBC's Shuster and called the comment "beneath contempt" and disgusting. And he said it could threaten Clinton's participation in a debate later this month on MSNBC and in future debates on the network.

The bad news just keeps coming for the old media, this time for major newspaper publisher the Tribune Company which may see its corporate bonds relegated even lower in the "junk bond" category.

Standard & Poor's Corp. put Tribune Co.'s already junk-rated debt under review for possible downgrade Friday, saying the Chicago-based media company's newspaper publishing group is likely to face further erosion of advertising revenue.

In placing Tribune's corporate credit rating on CreditWatch with negative implications, the debt-rating concern cited "our expectation that the rate of decline in advertising revenue at Tribune's newspaper publications may not improve appreciably and may worsen over the intermediate term."

Is the Glass City becoming the Berkeley of the Midwest?

In today's Toledo Blade (HT Maggie Thurber; bolds are mine):

VACATE THE PREMISES
Mayor to Marines: Leave downtown
He says urban exercises scare people

A company of Marine Corps Reservists received a cold send-off from downtown Toledo yesterday by order of Mayor Carty Finkbeiner.

The 200 members of Company A, 1st Battalion, 24th Marines, based in Grand Rapids, Mich., planned to spend their weekend engaged in urban patrol exercises on the streets of downtown as well as inside the mostly vacant Madison Building, 607 Madison Ave.

Toledo police knew days in advance about their plans for a three-day exercise. Yet somehow the memo never made it to Mayor Finkbeiner, who ordered the Marines out yesterday afternoon just minutes before their buses were to arrive.

"The mayor asked them to leave because they frighten people," said Brian Schwartz, the mayor's spokesman.

Hello and welcome to today's episode of "Democrat or Not?" Today we have the sordid tale of a "top official" in Governor Deval Patrick's administration in Massachusetts who is accused of sexual misconduct with a minor in Florida. Oh, the story is filled with all sorts of details... well, all the details but one, of course.

Yes, folks, the AP gives us all the "relevant" facts:

A top official in Gov. Deval Patrick's administration is accused of sexually assaulting a boy in the steam room of a Florida resort and has been placed on unpaid leave... Carl Stanley McGee, the assistant secretary for policy and planning, was arrested Dec. 28 after the suspected assault at the Gasparilla Inn and Club in Boca Grande, according to the Lee County Sheriff's Office.

Andrea Koppel, who left CNN last July after 14 years as an on-air correspondent, has joined M+R Strategic Services, a Washington, DC-based public relations firm with a long list of left of center and solidly left-wing clients, as chief of its Communications Division. Amongst the clients listed on the firm's Web site: Environmental Defense, Earthjustice, Natural Resources Defense Council, Union of Concerned Scientists, Turner Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, People for the American Way, Campaign for America's Future, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, National Organization of Women - New York State, NARAL Pro-Choice New York, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, as well as the radical left Center for Constitutional Rights and George Soros' Open Society Institute.

Koppel, the daughter of Ted Koppel, served as an international correspondent for CNN, then covered the State Department before spending her last months at CNN covering Capitol Hill. She proclaimed in the firm's press release that she wants to fight for “the voiceless in our society” as she embraced the “impressive roster of clients” and promised to help them “achieve their goals.”

CBS has a reputation for attracting the AARP viewer, so you can understand their lunging for the youth audience. But Katie Couric introduced a new segment on the CBS Evening News Friday night called "Fast Draw." That name fits. The drawings are extremely crude and done in Magic Marker. It looks like a Brownie Scouts project. The first episode in this project explained Super Delegates (see video). I actually like and support "Explainer" segments on news programs. There's not enough of them. But they can be done in a way that doesn't suggest to the viewer that they're in grade school.

It doesn't help Katie's image that after this crudely homemade "Schoolhouse Rock" segment, she exclaims "Now I get it!"

By now, most NBers are likely aware that Ann Coulter spoke to the Young America's Foundation Friday in a room down the hall from CPAC. Townhall.com has the entire speech on video here.

What folks might be less aware of is that Mark Steyn also spoke at CPAC Friday, and gave a speech that is absolutely must-see (video available here, h/t NBer motherbelt). I highly encourage all to view both.

That said, one of the fascinating issues raised by Coulter was that she would vote for McCain if he picked Romney as his running mate. Do the vehemently anti-McCain members here agree? Would this "heal" the Party, and bring enough Conservatives home to launch a real battle against Billary or Barack?

Would other conservative talkers get on board this ticket as well?

Real sports fans know that when the Super Bowl ends, one of the most exciting events of the year isn't far away: March Madness, Baby!

As such, let's talk some College B-Ball.

Will Memphis run the table? Is Duke as good as their record indicates? How about the Tarheels?

When you look at the current top 25, who'll be in the Final Four two months from now, and who are the surprises to keep an eye on?

Anything else sports-related on your mind?

For general discussion and debate. Possible talking point: Here we go again...Bill Clinton does another "I didn't have sex with that woman":

Clinton also said that everything he said in South Carolina about Illinois Sen. Barack Obama was "factually accurate," but a lot that has been said about what he said is "factually inaccurate." [...]

"A lot of the things that were said were factually inaccurate," Clinton said. "I did not ever criticize Senator Obama personally in South Carolina. ... But I think whenever I defend her, I, A, risk being misquoted, and, B, risk being the story. I don't want to be the story."

What color is the sky in Clinton's world? Do you think he was wagging his finger at the AP reporter when he said this?

Call it Today's homage to John Lennon: imagine there're no conservatives. The NBC show so much enjoyed the conservative-free citizens panel it hosted back in November that it brought it back this morning.

As I wrote about at the time, two timid Republicans were pitted against two partisan Dems. In November, one of the "Republicans," Susie O'Neil, claimed that the country is in decline due to the war "and because corporations are totally influencing our Members of Congress and the Senate." Call Susie a Michael Moore Republican.

The other Republican on the panel back then, Sarah Hungerford, said she was thinking of voting for . . . a Democrat. The pair were back this morning, again matched against two partisan Dems who both had apparently become Obama supporters.

View video here.

Admission: over the course of my NewsBusting, I've actually developed a certain admiration for Bob Herbert. Not that I agree with virtually anything the NY Times columnist has to say, but that I appreciate his directness and the absence in his work of the superfluous sarcasm that marks that of a number of his colleagues.

That said, I offer up Herbert's lament of this morning, "Where Are the Big Ideas?", as the epitome of wrong-headed liberal thinking. Herbert's complaint is that when it comes to the role of government, the presidential candidates aren't thinking big enough. Hillary and Obama's proposals to subject 1/7th of the nation's economy [or whatever the current proportion that health care represents] to government control are small beer in Bob's eyes. He dismisses their plans as "masterpieces of minutiae."

Herbert says that "the essential question the candidates should be trying to answer — but that is not even being asked very often — is how to create good jobs in the 21st century." The columnist gives us an idea of the kind of big-government thinking he has in mind to answer his question:

In light of recent high-profile shootings, Friday's World News with Charles Gibson featured a report that seemed to lament the absence of public calls for additional gun control. While not directly advocating new gun laws, the report cited statistics often used by those who support gun control. Before correspondent Pierre Thomas cited a poll showing 60 percent of Americans "favor stricter gun control laws," Gibson introduced the piece: "Well, there are 230 million guns in America. There are more guns than there are adults. In the past incidents, like the one in Kirkwood, would rekindle debate over gun control. But as ABC's Pierre Thomas reports, gun control advocates are now mostly silent." (Transcript follows)

The hatred from supposedly compassionate and open-minded Hollywoodans is something to behold, isn't it?

After all, just imagine despising a radio talk show host so much that you would suggest, on national television, that he should die of a drug overdose.

Alas, such was the case Friday evening when HBO's Bill Maher actually asked guest P.J. O'Rourke, who was talking about Rush Limbaugh's use of the prescription drug OxyContin (disgusting question after the jump):

Video/audio: Click image to play Flash video. MP3 audio. (Video also available here courtesy our friend Ms Underestimated.)