There's no political bias here, but given the interest many of our loyal readers have for college football, the relatively slow news week we're having, and the fact that's it's fun to beat up on Newsweek, here goes.

In a recent "CW Look at Summer Fashion Trends" Newsweek's Conventional Wisdom feature promised a look at "what's hot for this year's hot weather." Among the nods of approval, an up arrow to jean shorts:

They're back like Indiana Jones. Tuck a T shirt into a high-waisted pair.

While it sounds facetious, could this be a subtle ploy to boost readership by University of Florida alumni? [click here, watch intro] If so, isn't that a poor move that could alienate other readers in the SEC?

For more background into the "Gators Wear Jean Shorts" taunt, check here.

Update/Correction: Cross-referencing my results with that of the MRC's internal database, I found a news mention on the June 26 "Today" of the previous day's missile test, which aired at the 9:00 a.m. news brief.

I know that missile defense is hardly a major political issue right now, but successes in the program are worth at least passing mention in broadcast media, particularly given tensions with Iran and the utility of missile defenses for our military forces should conflict ensue with the nuclear weapon-pursuing theocratic state.

Unfortunately, according to Nexis, no such stories were filed on either ABC or CBS programming following the latest test on June 26. This despite the fact that the test involved a not one but two complicating twists to the testing scheme. Reported the Honolulu Advertiser's Diana Leone (emphasis mine):

Exit poll after exit poll in election after election shows the Democratic Party is staunchly supported by an overwhelming majority of African-American voters, many of whom are much more socially conservative on issues like abortion than their party leadership. The Democratic Party is also staunchly supported in primary battles and in fundraising drives by hard-core pro-choice liberals -- we're talking the same people who fought tooth-and-nail the federal ban on Partial-Birth Abortion.

So when a group of black ministers conducted a protest march in Washington, D.C., last week to raise awareness of its criticism of Planned Parenthood, media outlets had the recipe, instantly, for stories about possible conflicts that could divide the Democratic Party coalition on substantive, hot-button issues.

To perhaps no one's surprise here at NewsBusters, while the media covered the much hyped "Unity" rally in New Hampshire, the cable networks failed to even show up to shoot B-roll of Thursday's pro-life march on the DNC and RNC headquarters. Washington Times staffer Julia Duin covered the march and found no TV cameras present to record it:

Newsweek's Conventional Wisdom for its July 7 dead tree edition gives an approving up arrow for Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), noting that he is "[s]urging in national polls" before adding the cautionary note to "beware looking like just another politician."

But the real CW in DC this past week, which saw the Supreme Court affirm the individual's right to keep and bear arms, is that Obama has flip-flopped on the Second Amendent, something the editors at Newsweek most certainly must know.

Obama's Matrix-like bullet dodging on gun rights pinged ABCNews.com's Political Radar. From that blog's June 26 post (emphasis mine):

On June 20, I blogged about how All Saints Episcopal Church in Phoenix, Arizona, was thanked at the conclusion of a viral video entitled "I'm Voting Republican." The video featured actors portraying Republican voters who sounded left-wing talking points, including one portraying a minister saying that he was voting GOP because women should "never, ever, ever" be trusted with decisions over their own bodies.

After publishing my blog post, I called the church office for comment, leaving a voice mail for the church's financial administrator, who was thanked by name in the credits.

Checking my e-mail tonight I found the following e-mail reply, by the executive assistant to All Saints' rector, denying advance knowledge by church officials of the "content... or intended use" of the video:

The ink was hardly dry on the June 26 ruling overturning Washington, D.C.'s handgun ban when Newsweek started the hand-wringing about how the city's political establishment would react.

Rather than profiling D.C. resident Dick Heller, the victor in the lawsuit, or officials from gun rights groups on their next move in challenging other gun bans with yesterday's precedent, Newsweek sought to press D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty (D) on how he can blunt the scope of the Heller decision.

The teaser headline and caption from the Web page read:

"D.C.'s Dilemma: Washington's mayor weighs options after gun ban overturned."

That's right, the high court ruled that a near-total gun ban is a blatant violation of an individual's right to keep and bear arms as guaranteed by the Second Amendment. Given the mainstream media's history of vigorously defending its freedoms of speech and press from any abridgement or "common sense" restriction, you'd think consistency would compel a little bit of a slant or a tip of the hat to the court upholding the plain language of another article in the Bill of Rights.

It should prove interesting to see how many other reporters pick up on this.

Barack Obama is scooting to the right on gun rights, notes ABC's Jake Tapper, in a June 26 blog post at his Political Punch blog.

The ABC correspondent picked up on an exchange between the Illinois senator and a reporter from Pennsylvania, the land of bitter gun-clingers:

Craig Layne, a reporter from WJET-TV in Erie, Penn., today asked Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, a question on the DC gun ban.

Here's how the exchange went down.

"In November you mentioned that the DC handgun law was constitutional," Layne said. "Now you're embracing the Supreme Court's 5-4 decision striking down that law-

"That's not what I said," Obama interrupted, per ABC News' Jennifer Duck.

I'm still trying to figure out who died and made Joe "Anonymous" Klein Time magazine's foreign policy expert-in-residence. The sometime presidential primary fiction writer apparently thinks John McCain's statement on the Bush administration's nuclear deal with North Korea is too "grudging":

...Congratulations to George W. Bush for finally making the correct choice--diplomatic engagement, regional talks that enabled quiet unofficial contacts with the North Koreans, which then led to direct negotiations--in resolving this dispute. Wonder what John Bolton is thinking this morning?

Update: John McCain has just released this statement, which is a bit too grudging for my taste, but does raise the appropriate questions going forward

So let's see: Klein praises Bush but takes a mild swipe at Sen. McCain for having the gall to suggest that North Korea might not live up to its word, which it clearly has a history of doing.

Newsweek's Conventional Wisdom today is pulling a Madeleine Albright and toasting North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il on a deal with the United States. The dictator will destroy a nuclear reactor in exchange for the U.S. removing the reclusive, repressive regime from its list of terrorist states.

At right you can see a screen capture of the up arrow. The caption reads, "North Korea: U.S. to take it off the terror list after nuclear declaration. More cognac for the Dear Leader!"

Putting aside for a moment the matter of the wisdom or folly of the deal, since Newsweek CW clearly judges it wise, it's telling that the Bush foreign policy team is not given the thumbs up here instead of Kim Jong-Il. 

Update 2: Stay tuned for a forthcoming piece by NB contributor Matthew Balan on CNN's coverage. Shortly after the decision came down the network aired a videotaped report that skewed in favor of a gun control advocate who survived last years Virginia Tech shootings.

Update: Goldstein notes there is just one majority opinion, no concurring opinions, but that there are two dissents.

The Supreme Court has overturned the D.C. handgun ban. The ruling is 5-4 with Justice Antonin Scalia writing the majority opinion. The Court finds that individuals have the right to keep and bear arms.

Writes Tom Goldstein at SCOTUSBlog:

It is striking that the decision is not clouded by ambiguity created by separate opinions. One opinion on each side.

Consider this an open thread on media coverage of gun rights.

Staffers for the Detroit Free Press are now in the clear when it comes to cutting campaign contributions for politicians, reports NewsGuild.org, the Web site for The Newspaper Guild, a print journalists union. (h/t Business & Media Institute's Dan Gainor; emphasis mine):

An arbitrator's decision voiding a Detroit Free Press ban on political contributions by editorial employees has implications for other publishers attempting to control what their employees can do off the job-provided those employees are protected by an appropriately worded collective bargaining agreement.

In his May 27 decision, arbitrator Paul E. Glendon ruled that the Free Press cannot ban any particular activity of its editorial employees without documenting that the activity is compromising the paper or the employees' work. Without such documentation, Glendon wrote, the company could not justify its "unilateral incursion" against contractual safeguards.

Over at HumanEvents.com, John Gizzi has House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on the record saying that the Democratic caucus, far from being agnostic on the so-called Fairness Doctrine, is actually interested in resurrecting it. What's more, Pelosi herself wants to bring back the policy that could literally silence conservative talk radio. [Sign the MRCAction.org petition for broadcaster freedom.]

From his June 25 article:

At a breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor yesterday, I asked Pelosi if Pence failed to get the required signatures on a discharge petition to get his anti-Fairness Doctrine bill out of committee, would she permit the Pence measure to get a floor vote this year.

"No," the Speaker replied, without hesitation. She added that "the interest in my caucus is the reverse" and that New York Democratic Rep. "Louise Slaughter has been active behind this [revival of the Fairness Doctrine] for a while now."

Yesterday I noted how the Baltimore Sun failed to note the party affiliation of Democratic Mayor Sheila Dixon, who is under investigation for corruption.

To be fair to the Sun, I thought I'd note that Dixon's party allegiance is referenced in a June 25 story in the second paragraph:

Companies linked to a developer questioned in the state investigation of Mayor Sheila Dixon have made nearly $500,000 in political contributions in the past decade, state campaign finance records show.

The 57 limited liability corporations named in court records as having possible ties to Doracon Contracting President Ronald H. Lipscomb gave $487,000, almost entirely to Democrats, including tens of thousands to Dixon and Gov. Martin O'Malley.

Five days ago I noted how the Associated Press ignored Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon's Democratic affiliation in a story on a police raid of her private residence. Dixon is under investigation for corruption allegedly going back to her last public portfolio: Baltimore City Council President.

Well today the reliably liberal Democrat-boosting Baltimore Sun also provided a measure of cover for Dixon by leaving out her party label in John Fritze and Doug Donovan's article, "Dixon gifts probed."

Two reporters writing 34 paragraphs found zero occasions to mention Dixon's party affiliation. In Baltimore, the mayoral office is decided in a partisan contest, complete with a separate party primary, so the party affiliation is hardly a state secret.

The word "Democrat" did crop up once in Fritze and Donovan's article, but that was to label another Maryland politician -- not from Baltimore -- also under investigation for corruption:

Can those rascally Republicans once again dupe otherwise well-educated, smart pro-choice women into sacrificing their womb on the altar of Republican presidential power?!

That's the sentiment you might expect from deep within the bowels of NARAL Pro-Choice America or Planned Parenthood, but it was essentially the question that Time's Amy Sullivan posed in her June 23 article, "Will Pro-Choice Women Back McCain?"

Sullivan's thesis boiled down to this: pro-life Republican candidates do as well as they do with some pro-choice voters because they throw out some bones trot out their pro-choice spouses and pro-choice feature speakers at Republican conventions to throw pro-choice Republicans and independents a bone, while Democrats are ham-handed in their efforts to downplay their pro-choice policies (emphasis mine):

From the Disney-owned Web site that brought you concerns that college co-eds were foregoing textbooks to pay for birth control comes the latest tale of high gas price-induced economic woes.

"Nevada Brothels Hit Hard by Gas Prices," ABCNews.com trumpets in a teaser headline in the top headlines slideshow on its front page. The editors showed a bit more leg in the photo caption: "Owners fight back: free $50 gas cards for high-spending customers."

Here's some of the tale of woe from the article itself:

As the Silver State's fuel prices hit all-time highs, Nevada's brothel employees find it harder to make a living these days, leaving some people wondering whether they should stay in the business.

At the Stardust Ranch in eastern Nevada, bartender Cindy Howe says they're "down to only two girls. They don't want to come here because business is down."

Who says the Washington Post never reports the downsides of socialized medicine?

In a story below the fold on the June 23 Business section front page, staffers Kendra Marr and Ariana Eunjung Cha took a look at how a Bethesda, Md., company is setting out to make money by capitalizing on dissatisfaction with China's socialized medical system.

Marr and Cha look at how Bethesda-based Chindex International "is breaking into the heavily regulated Chinese health-care system by targeting the elite, who are willing to pay premium prices for premium care."

The Post staffers did try to put a bit of lipstick on the Communist medicine pig, but had to admit that the, um, efficiency of socialized medicine doesn't really provide that personal touch. You know, like private screening rooms:

By now you may have seen press coverage of a new viral video entitled "I'm Voting Republican" in which numerous people give facetious reasons for voting GOP this November, all of them echoing liberal memes about conservatives and Republicans.

But checking the credits, I came across something that caught my eye, the "Special Thanks" portion of the video credits. One thing in particular stood out, a note of thanks to "All Saints' Episcopal Church." The name appearing above that credit lists one "Shelley Dudley" as another person thanked for her help. Since SyntheticHuman Pictures, the company that produced the "I'm Voting Republican" video hails from Phoenix, I quickly found the Web page for the church in question and that Ms. Dudley is the church's financial administrator.

One of the scenes in the video features an actor named Jason J. Baker portraying one Rev. David Madison saying, "I'm voting Republican because women just can't be trusted to make decisions about their own bodies. Never, ever, ever." Behind Baker is a stained-glass window.

Given the partisan nature of the video and the advice the company gives in a "Get Involved" section of its Web site for concerned viewers to join liberal groups like MoveOn.org, it may be worth someone in the mainstream media asking if it's appropriate for a church to let its facilities be used for the filming of a partisan video.

When she's not using her vlog to further a biased take on the news, I've noticed that Katie Couric often complains about rather trivial nuisances in her Notebook segments posted on her Couric & Co. blog. Couric's June 18 edition sounds like a shorter and perkier version of an Andy Rooney rant on the topic of the decline of the wrist watch's popularity with the kids these days.

You see, with more and more people owning cell phones, fewer whippersnappers people see the need for wearing a wrist watch.

Well, I'll let Katie explain, if you care to watch, here. Here's an excerpt:

Today's Conventional Wisdom at Newsweek.com gives the imperial thumbs down for public campaign financing system, and all because the all-but-anointed Democratic champion is foregoing federal funding.:

[Down arrow] Public campaign financing: Obama decision to forgo funds could signal the end of system.

Besides being entirely too premature to make a pronouncement like that, it's a blown opportunity for the snarky editors at Newsweek to blast Obama for breaking a campaign pledge. Rather than assign the Illinois Democrat a down arrow for backing out of his pledge to run on public financing, Newsweek is heralding the demise of a system Obama seemed to favor just months ago.