Yes, great idea

Yes, pretty good idea

No opinion

No, bad idea

No, really bad idea

Topics in this show: Barack Obama breaks his promise to rely on public funding, banning Islamic women on the camaign trail, and the Democrats' solution to high oil prices.

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The Orlando Sentinel, in line with the directive of its cost-cutting owner, Sam Zell, has had major cosmetic changes starting with the Sunday edition. Here is how it was described in the Wall Street Journal:

The Orlando Sentinel landed on newsstands Sunday with a new layout featuring more graphics, quick-read digests of top news, blog summaries and other changes aimed at making the newspaper more appealing to harried readers.

Orlando is a proving ground for Sam Zell's effort to reinvent floundering Tribune Co., owner of a string of television stations and newspapers, including the Sentinel, the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times. Between now and the end of September, Tribune plans to roll out redesigns at its papers. Accompanying the makeovers will be scaled-back page counts and further paring of employees.

Mr. Zell took control of the company in December after leading an $8.2 billion deal to take Tribune private. The buyout left Tribune saddled with debt amid an industrywide meltdown in newspaper advertising, but Mr. Zell and his new management team of radio and TV executives have promised a revival built on fresh ideas.

The Pentagon on Monday released a quarterly report showing dramatic reductions in violence in Iraq compared to a year earlier, but only ABC aired a full story Monday evening while NBC gave it short-shrift as anchor Brian Williams cited the reduction in violence “by as much as 80 percent” since “before the so-called troop surge.” He then added a caveat about how the report “also warns the positive trend here remains, quote, 'fragile, reversible and uneven.'” CBS didn't mention the Department of Defense report, but gave a few seconds to a front page USA Today story on how the number of Americans killed by roadside bombs has plummeted 88 percent from a year ago.

Fill-in ABC anchor Elizabeth Vargas teased, “Report card: The government says there's good news from Iraq. Violence is down dramatically, while security and the economy are improving.” Reporter Terry McCarthy recited how “civilian deaths are down 75 percent since last July. Total security incidents are at their lowest level in over four years.” McCarthy credited “a number of reasons for the progress: Better performance by the Iraqi security forces; surprising new leadership by Prime Minister Maliki, who's confronting both al-Qaeda and the militias; and the creation of 103,000 Sons of Iraq -- local security forces, many of them recruited from the insurgency.” Indeed, McCarthy confirmed the Pentagon's assessment:

For the past three weeks, we've traveled the length of Iraq, from Basra in the south to Mosul in the north, and the reduction in violence is remarkable everywhere.

If you needed any more evidence as to just how far to the left NASA's James Hansen is, consider that on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of his highly-controversial testimony to Congress -- wherein he presaged gloom and doom at the hands of the naturally occurring gas carbon dioxide -- he decided to make his global warming case at the ultra-leftwing website the Huffington Post (h/t NBer NL207).

This puts him in the company of such luminaries as Alec Baldwin, John Cusack, Bill Maher, and other Hollywoodans feigning intellectual superiority.

Of course, this comes after being interviewed on the ultra-leftwing National Public Radio.

If this guy's an impartial, unbiased member of the scientific community, so's Rosie O'Donnell!

Frankly, I have absolutely no interest in quoting anything this man has to say. As such, those that can stand it should go here -- with my blessings and condolences.

Much has already been written of the U.S. Supreme Court's lawless, nonsensical decision in Boumediene v. Bush that gives America's terrorist enemies unprecedented access to our civilian court system, but little has been written about the aggressively anti-American public interest law firm that helped to make it happen.*

The nonprofit Center for Constitutional Rights, which acted as co-counsel in the case, is deeply enmeshed in the politics of terrorism (take one guess on whose side) and has even taken money from groups linked to terrorism. CCR donors include the Ohio branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Safa Trust Inc., and the International Institute of Islamic Thought, all of which have been accused of connections to Islamist terror groups.

If we're going to promote a candid discussion of race in our country, we can't jump down the throat of everyone who ventures onto the racial minefield.  Rather than finding offense in Roger Simon's suggestion that choosing Bobby Jindal as his VP running-mate would hurt John McCain among racist voters, I propose we simply analyze it.  Here's what Simon said on this evening's Hardball, as guest host Mike Barnicle led the Politico reporter and Newsweek's Howard Fineman through a tour d'horizon of possible VP picks.

MIKE BARNICLE: Interesting new Republican face, Bobby Jindal, Governor of Louisiana.

ROGER SIMON: Interesting.  Young.  Very young, almost too young to run, not quite, he gets over the constitutional limit. But I gotta raise the delicate subject: if you're John McCain, and you know that you're going to get an 'x' percentage of votes based on race, do you pick a dark-skinned vice-presidential candidate, who some people are going to say–wrongly—is black, is a Hindu converted to Catholicism, who's an Indian-American? You know, none of that should matter in American politics, but is it a safe choice, or is it a choice that is going to get everybody chattering? I think McCain is going to go for a safer choice than that.

View video here.

When ABC's George Stephanopoulos, along with three-fourths of his panel, pile on a Democrat with the cameras rolling, you know said liberal elected official made a blunder of epic proportions.

Such was the case on Sunday's "This Week" when with the exception of Democrat pol Donna Brazile, it was virtually unanimous that Democrat presidential nominee Barack Obama's decision to go back on his campaign promise to accept public funds was "a big, big deal and a big, big flip-flop."

Readers should brace themselves for an alternate reality, as in a strange moment in television news history, George Stephanopoulos, Cokie Roberts, Sam Donaldson, and Matt Dowd actually agreed that the Obamessiah made a serious boo boo (video available here, Brazile's sycophancy removed for what should be obvious reasons, picture courtesy ABC News):

AP political reporter Charles Babington, who recently touted "ample evidence that Obama is something special," is now warning that Obama is bracing against "race-based ads." Recent examples of "racially tinged" TV images like Obama wearing a turban and native Kenyan gear are "harbingers" of conservative 527-group ads to come. Babington then typically recounted the usual liberal-media suspects on racial politics – the Willie Horton ad and the crumpled-letter ad from Jesse Helms.

But he typically ignored acidulous race-baiting liberal commercials like the NAACP in 2000 suggesting that George W. Bush was dragging black victim James Byrd to death behind a pickup all over again, and the Missouri Democratic Party ad in 1998 that claimed: "When you don’t vote, you let enough church explode.When you don't vote, you let another cross burn." Babington implied that the history of nasty racial politics is a one-way avenue:

Shortly after Michelle Obama’s appearance as a guest host on ABC’s the View, her choice of clothing began attracting media attention, turning political and general assignment journalists into fashion critics. NBC’s Today show claimed that "fashion icon" Obama had started a "frock frenzy." Before that, NBC's Lee Cowan, who has said covering Barack Obama makes his "knees quake," gushed that "Michelle Obama had always been there, dressed as brightly as her husband's smile."

Well today, Chicago Tribune fashion columnist Wendy Donahue took a stab at political commentary, using Obama’s dress as her news hook.

The MSM is sure to have a field day with McCain advisor Charlie Black's statement that a terror attack on U.S. soil "would be a big advantage" to the Republican candidate. McCain has been quick to dissociate himself from the remark, and surely Black would have been well-advised not to make it. Predictably, CNN's Jack Cafferty has been leading the charge against Black. In his "Cafferty File" question this afternoon, the CNN commentator called Black's remark "breathtaking in its stupidity" and asked viewers whether Black should be fired.

View video here.

But does Cafferty, in all his outrage, realize that Hillary Clinton made a remark almost identical to Black's? Here's Hillary, in a report from . . . CNN entitled "Clinton: Terrorist attack would help GOP" [emphasis added]:

In any other industry, when revenues fall steeply, those in charge take at least a casual look at the quality of their product, and try to get a grip on whether it's meeting consumers' needs and expectations.

But that never seems to happen in the news business.

True to form, the New York Times's Richard Perez-Pena devoted over 850 words to the latest developments, and had nothing to say about product quality:

For newspapers, the news has swiftly gone from bad to worse. This year is taking shape as their worst on record, with a double-digit drop in advertising revenue, raising serious questions about the survival of some papers and the solvency of their parent companies.

Ad revenue, the primary source of newspaper income, began sliding two years ago, and as hiring freezes turned to buyouts and then to layoffs, the decline has only accelerated.

On Monday’s CBS "Early Show," correspondent Jeff Glor did a report on "five things you should know about John McCain" and highlighted details such as: "Number four, a maverick even back in high school, John McCain was nicknamed ‘the punk’...A reputation that followed him to the naval academy." During the segment, USA Today columnist Walter Shapiro added: "John McCain graduated five slots from the bottom of the Annapolis class of 1958."

Contrast those bits of information with the hard-hitting facts revealed about Barack Obama during a similar segment on last Wednesday’s show: "Number four -- in addition to enjoying basketball and cycling during down time, Obama loves to play Scrabble...Obama's job as a teenager was at a Baskin Robbins and to this day he does not like ice cream." The segment on Obama also described how he and Michelle met and where he buys his suits.

Meanwhile, on Monday’s show, Glor also focused on McCain being born in Panama: "Number five, McCain was not born in any of the 50 United States...His father had been stationed there by the Navy, creating an eventual source of controversy." Shapiro added: "The Constitution says a president has to be a natural born citizen." Glor also questioned McCain’s skill as a pilot: "Number three, when McCain was not down in Vietnam, it was not his first. It was not his second. But his third plane crash as a pilot." Finally, Glor got to number one: "...when he first ran for Congress he was charged with being a carpet bagger."

Discrimination

The network news outlets - ABC, CBS and NBC - have missed a great opportunity to cover actual political news in the last week by failing to report on the loan scandal surrounding two Democratic senators, Business & Media Institute Managing Editor Amy Menefee told "Fox & Friends Weekend" June 21.

"This story has everything," Menefee said. "It has a former presidential candidate, Chris Dodd. It has two senators who are getting, like you said, sweetheart loans. It has Kent Conrad, another senator, who called the CEO of the lender to get his loan, which is not what we normally do, and then said, ‘Oh, I didn't get any preferential treatment and I didn't do anything wrong, but I'm going to give a charitable donation to remedy the fact that I didn't do anything wrong.'"

Menefee said it was "very sad" that the networks failed to report the scandal - not just because they refused to go after two Democrats, but because they missed an opportunity to expose the bailout plan Dodd has been defending.

I can find Michelle Obama’s thesis everywhere. However, I can find no reference or record of Barack Obama’s.

Do any of you know where a copy is located (assuming one exists), and what the topic was?

Certainly it is stunning in its brilliance. And I can’t wait for this must read. Any help my readers can provide in locating this thesis will be greatly appreciated.

She thinks she has lit upon a "responsible idea" to regulate guns. The idea Megan Kristen Lewis of the Tallahassee (Fla.) Democrat thinks is "responsible" is to put global positioning tracking devices (GPS) in every gun. That way the government could track down your firearm if it is "stolen" or used in a crime.

Miss Lewis attempts to assure the reader that she really is a fan of guns before she unleashes this great idea, of course. She knows people with guns, she claims, and she doesn't "fear" them. Why, she grew up around them, she says. Of course, they were always locked up in a safe so no one could get to them. Still, she says her Father taught her about "weapon safety from a very young age."

Sadly, her Father neglected to teach her about the Constitution or about world and American history because if he did her Big Brother gun tracking program idea would have never occurred to her in the first place.