Delivering the commencement address Sunday at Ohio State University in Columbus, where he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Journalism degree, NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams implied America is broken as he told the graduates: “We need you to fix the country.”

That clip, squeezed in between Al Gore at Carnegie Mellon and Martin Sheen at Notre Dame, aired as part of an annual compilation of commencement advice run at the end of Monday's NBC Nightly News. NBC also aired this from Williams: “We need you all now to step up. And every adult in this place has every faith that you're up to the job.”

Video of a commencement story on the Web site of NBC's Columbus affiliate, WCMH-TV, featured a longer version of the line from Williams: “We need you to fix the country -- and I'm sorry to ask this of you.” In another soundbite aired by the local station, Williams paraphrased Bill Clinton: “There is nothing wrong with America that someone from Ohio State can't fix. Go get them OH!”

[UPDATE, 10:30 PM EDT: I found full video on MSNBC.com (Breitbart TV has that same 13-minute Flash video here), and the entire address isn't as political as the “we need you to fix the country” comment suggested. Williams, however, apologized: “On behalf of my generation, I'm so sorry, the Internet is so cool we got sidetracked.” He urged the graduates to “pick one area” and do something about it, recommending they “start with climate” since “something tells me this may be a challenge in the years ahead” to “find a way to get around without fuel in our tanks that comes from an enemy of this country.”

Echoing a theme of those calling for “change,” Williams pleaded:

We won't see an election like this for decades again in this country. We are at a crossroads. They don't get more important and it's so important that you all get involved. Put your generational stamp on American politics.

With summer looming, and the nation experiencing its first heatwave of 2008, it certainly isn't surprising our global warming obsessed media have resumed the spread of climate hysteria as reported by my colleague Jeff Poor just a few hours ago.

Yet, given their willingness the past few months to discuss ethanol's connection to higher food prices, is it too much to ask for these same press outlets to offer a little balance by presenting the benefits of rising carbon dioxide levels along with the mythical costs?

Take for example Lawrence Solomon's truly astounding article published at Canada's Financial Post Saturday entitled "In Praise of CO2" (emphasis added throughout):

As the United States edges ever closer to tyranny with freedom dieing a little more each year with the passage of new laws, the handing down of judicial rulings, and the promulgation of executive orders, it is assumed by increasing numbers that it is the role of government to provide for all of our needs and to save us from our own worst tendencies irrespective of whether or not these are matters we want massive bureaucracies poking into our private lives about. As bad as such intrusions are, the fear such a scenario provokes pales in comparison to the almost messianic mantel being bestowed upon Barack Obama, qualified (we are told) to hold the highest elected government office in the land for no other reason than that he happens to be Barack Obama.

When Americans went into the voting booth, it use to be expected they would cast their franchise for the individual most capable of administering the reigns of the executive branch. Never was the individual to be chosen meant to give the teeming masses their purpose for existence. However, with the rise of Barack Obama as he seeks to win the 2008 Democratic nomination for the presidency, his campaign has taken on increasingly utopian tones.

Think it's hot outside? "Good Morning America" wants you to think it is your fault - at least that's why an expert featured on the June 9 show told viewers it is hotter outside.

Stanford University professor Dr. Stephen Schneider said that methane and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are making hot temperatures even hotter.

"While this heat wave like all other heat waves is made by Mother Nature, we've been fooling around by turning the knob and making a little bit hotter," Schneider said. "[W]e've already increased by 35 percent the amount of carbon dioxide which traps heat. We've added 150 percent more methane, which also traps heat."

Ironically, in 1971, Schneider co-authored a research article that explored both warming and cooling of the Earth, warning that a certain level of aerosols entering the atmosphere could trigger an ice age.

John McCain's first major television ad of the general election campaign is an apparent attempt to inoculate himself from criticism of his support of the Iraq War by  underlining the fact that War Is Hell. New York Times reporter Julie Bosman used the opportunity (in the paper's regular Ad Campaign feature on Saturday) to suggest from out of nowhere that McCain had a "warmonger" reputation to live down.

I received this CNN e-mail this morning:

Pending home sales in April rose 6.3%, from March, but fell 13.1% from last year, according to a Realtor trade group.

Not bad. It might even be fair to say (emphasis: might) that the real estate market is on the long road back to something resembling normalcy.

The Associated Press's J.W. Elphinstone sanitized this pretty decent news, and I'll show you how:

Imagine, if you will, that former Arkansas Gov. Mike "majored in miracles" Huckabee had won the Republican nominating contest and in the rapture of exhuberance at the historic moment, a Republican congressman who is also the son of a famous religious right clergyman exulted that "the event itself is so extraordinary that another chapter could be added to the Bible to chronicle its significance."

That would certainly get widespread attention in the MSM, being so over-the-top and messianic pronouncement about a Republican presidential figure. Not so much when the hallelujah chorus is coming from the son of famous left-wing preacher Jesse Jackson. (h/t Michele at Reformed Chicks Blabbing)

Aside from some blogs picking up on the item as originally reported by Politico's Josephine Hearn on June 5, I'm aware of no media scrutiny about Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr.'s hosannas song of praise over fellow Illinois Democrat Sen. Barack Obama (emphasis mine):

On Monday's "Today" show, NBC's Amy Robach sat down with a French climber who was arrested for scaling the "New York Times," building to promote his belief that global warming kills more people every day than 9/11.

The "Today"' show graphic bragged it had an exclusive with the global warming alarmist, Alain Robert, and while Robach did note the criminal charges being brought against him, she never challenged Robert's assertion that climate change was deadlier than al Qaeda.

AMY ROBACH: What is it about scaling skyscrapers that makes you so passionate?

ALAIN ROBERT: This is something a bit different, but most of all, you know, now since nearly a year, I have decided to fight on global warming, and that's the reason why I have decided to climb the "New York Times" building.

ROBACH: Yeah this climb was different than others, because the other times, you did it perhaps just for the thrill of it. This time you did it with a message. Tell us about this organization and why it's so important to you.

ROBERT: In fact, you know, actually, global warming is killing more people every week than 9/11, so which is a big amount of people.

The following is the full interview as it occurred on the June 9, "Today" show:

With all of the videos of Barack Obama’s pastor problems and gaffes, it’s no wonder the liberal media are afraid of what conservative 527 groups will do with them.

A June 9 article entitled “Decency in D.C.” and featured in the “local news” section of the Boston Globe, columnist Kevin Cullen decried the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (SBVT) – the group which ran ads against Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) in 2004 – as liars and all that is wrong with Washington, D.C.

Perhaps still sore from the 2004 election, and taking a cue from Media Matters, Cullen claimed, “And, the best part is, if [the Swift Boat Vets] can't find any videotape in which [Rev.] Wright actually says anything remotely as outrageous, they'll just make it up.”

On Monday's "Good Morning America," for the fourth time in just two and a half months, the ABC program featured a segment on the so-called pregnant man, Thomas Beatie. Since first reporting the story on March 26, GMA has been fascinated with the case of the woman who had surgery to become a man, but kept her reproductive organs and is now having a child.

On Monday's show, reporter Ryan Owens fretted, "But how will society treat this less than conventional family?" The journalist offered liberal, non-judgmental platitudes such as "Today, Thomas says, different is normal." Spouting more sayings from Beatie, Owens recited, "Love makes a family, he says, and that's all that matters." On April 4, correspondent Andrea Canning lauded the transgendered woman as "the man the world has been waiting to meet." On March 26, GMA news anchor Chris Cuomo, cooed, "Oddity aside, biology aside, it is all about love of this child and as long as that's present, everything else is really going to be normal." Each story avoided what many would consider to be a salient fact: Despite media hype, men do not, in fact, give birth to children.

Even co-host Diane Sawyer seemed to be having trouble with the story. On Monday, she announced, "Beatie, the transgendered woman who became a man and she will -- he will give birth next month."

...you call viewers in rural Virginia rednecks.

But NBC/MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell has since apologized for her off-the-cuff remark from last Thursday. Reports TVNewser:

MSNBC anchor Andrea Mitchell apologized today for calling southwest Virginia, "real redneck" country. Toward the end of her 1pmET hour, she said, "I owe an apology to the good people of Bristol, Virginia for something stupid that I said."

The editor of the Bristol Herald Courier (in Bristol, Virginia), J. Todd Foster, wrote a column published yesterday in response to the comment.

"I'm a redneck. But then again, so is every one of you reading this column. Or so says Andrea Mitchell of NBC News," writes Foster.

This is pretty serious stuff that the American public surely would like more details on. Can we expect the MSM to follow up on this with some questions? Probably not, but they need to.

Marc Ambinder notes how the Democratic Justice Department will be interested in making a case against senior Bush adminstration officials in the future.

Thomas Lifson reminds us of Obama’s take on this:

Barack Obama’s plan for imposing unity on the nation after he takes office apparently entails a close look at war crimes trials for Bush administration officials. He has even said so in an interview with Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Daily News.

This kind of change — putting your predecessors on trial for their conduct of policy — may not be what most Americans really want or expect from someone with Obama’s gauzy rhetoric of unity. But unity has a dark side in the hands of people who regard their opponents as criminals. America has two centuries-plus of history lacking the totalitarian practice of jailing the predecessors when a new president takes office.

This is the sort of report that immediately gets my BS detector up. A recent Palm Beach [Fla.] Post story is trying to claim that Americans are running to Europe to claim dual citizenship because the U.S. is so horrible for everyone here. Yet, even as the story is making the claim that more Americans are fleeing this country for Europe, it offers no statistics to prove it. And the Post even admits that there are none to be got. So, in essence, all we end up with is a claim and nothing but circumstantial and anecdotal evidence with no real facts to prove anything. But this piece does, however, succeed in bashing the USA at every turn.

The first sentence sets the tone of lament that the rest of the piece carries by giving the reader a sense of something lost, a foreboding that foreshadows the end of the prominence of the United States of America.

ABCNews.com reported on Sunday that the network had invited Senators Barack Obama and John McCain to appear in a joint, 90 minute, primetime town hall meeting on ABC. This hardly seems balanced, as ABC has donated 64 minutes worth of town hall air time exclusively to Democrats during the just-ended presidential primary season. This came about through two such events that aired on "Good morning America" on March 26 and July 16, 2007, one with Hillary Clinton and another with John Edwards.

The Republicans, however, had no representation in a GMA town hall. So, what sense does it make to include a Democrat in ABC's first 2008 town hall that would have actually featured a GOP contender? (Yahoo News has reported that the Obama and McCain camps are rejecting of the offer of a joint appearance.) However, if ABC were to argue that McCain has also turned down previous requests for a exclusive town hall, is it likely that Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, Mike Huckabee or any of the other Republican primary contenders would have all said no to the same free publicity given to Edwards and Clinton?

The first such event featured softball questions from co-host Robert Roberts to Senator Clinton, including a query about whether the former first lady's 1993 plan for universal health care was "ahead of its time." Roberts even allowed Clinton plants from the town hall audience to pose questions:

CNN’s "American Morning," following-up on their segment last Friday with Gail Sheehy on whether sexism factored into Hillary Clinton’s loss, asked "pioneering feminist" Gloria Steinem about the issue on Monday morning. Steinem placed the blame squarely on "misogyny and the culture at large, and especially in the media." "[N]o candidate in history has been asked to step down by the media. She was. The average time that it takes for a loser to endorse a winner in this situation is four months -- four months. She did it in four days, and look how she was criticized, you know, for not doing it the very same night. It's outrageous."

I mean really, that must be the only explanation why ABCNews.com keeps showing us pictures of the so-called pregnant man. It must be a way for us to save gas. Why drive to the carnival in town to see the Bearded Lady when she's just a few clicks away on your computer?

This isn't the first time the Disney-owned network thought fit to put pictures of transsexual woman Thomas Beatie on its "top headlines" lineup. Back on May 21 the Web site teased pictures of Beatie as she "Labors... In Yard."

Perhaps as a peace offering or palette-cleanser, ABCNews.com is also featuring in its "top headlines" pictures of attractive Hollywood starlets in so-called Band-Aid dresses.

What say you? Slow news day, or is ABC just following the maxim that "sex sells"?

On Monday’s CBS "Early Show," co-host Harry Smith talked about Hillary Clinton dropping out of the presidential race with liberal blogger Arianna Huffington and former Democratic Congresswoman Pat Schroeder, who commented on sexism during the campaign: "It troubles me a lot what we saw. It was like they made a witch out of her [Hillary Clinton], some people. You know we thought the Salem witch trials were over. But some people, no matter what she said, it was 'don't believe it. She's really evil.' This is -- I've never seen anyone do that to a candidate." [audio available here]

That comment was sparked by Smith asking about Clinton: "