An April 7 CBS Evening News report on the health care monetary burden of illegal aliens on American taxpayers has just now drawn the ire and the fire of the two largest Hispanic grievance groups -- the National Council of La Raza (translation: "The Race") and the Mexican American Legal and Educational Fund (MAL (not Mos) DEF).

Byron Pitts' piece is fairly mild and pretty much down the middle of the fairway, and CBS News and their (for now) flagship girl Katie Couric deserve kudos for at least addressing the issue.

But the Latino Intolerance Duo (LID -- as in flipped their's) can not let stand unchallenged the reporting of the costs of the invasion. Pitts pointing out that someone somewhere (that would of course be us) must pick up the tab -- when the likes of Fabiola (the illegal alien mother featured in the story) does not -- is to them an "anti-Latino falsehood". They do not offer how or why something so obvious as this is either "anti-Latino" or a "falsehood" -- we are left to assume that their asserting it empirically makes it so.

On our end, there was bit of a bone to be picked with the Tiffany Network's numbers.

The Press doesn't care about these things, why should you?

This originally appeared in the April 21st edition of Human Events.

The Media's Reaction to George and Charlie

Call it the Audacity of Journalism.

ABC's Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos slipped and let a bit of actual reporting seep into their Democrat Presidential debate moderation efforts on April 16. They mistakenly engaged in fifty minutes worth of pertinent inquiry, largely regarding the patriotic perspectives and numerous troubling relationships of Illinois Senator Barack Obama -- and to a lesser extent examining the fact that New York Senator Hillary Clinton has a Herculean ability to create her Living History out of whole cloth.

The response from the Left has been withering and unremitting.

Editor's Note: Video below the fold.

And the Best of Randi Rhodes

To reassign the estimable Bill Cosby's Fat Albert assessment, Air America's Randi Rhodes is reminiscent of school on Saturday -- no class.

Captured is a five-plus minute video (here below the fold) in which Rhodes -- utilizing language and manner more sailor than lady-like -- excoriates both the junior Senator from New York and former Vice Presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro at length as the "W" word (not "Woman"). She also touches on the Governor Eliot Spitzer story, commenting a bit on his "W" and her over-pricedness, and finds a little time to slam "Dina McGreevey", wife of disgraced former New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey.

Rhodes was so gracefully serving as an emissary for the liberal radio network for the alleged benefit of one of its affiliates. So appreciative and proud was Air America that they suspended her - an apparently rare (in fact unprecedented -- big time h/t to The Radio Equalizer) disciplinary move by the network.

What is decidedly less exceptional are similar invective-laden screeds from the hack broadcaster whose show and network have fewer listeners than the number of people who read their VCR operator's manuals.

On Monday night, we were privy to Round II of Dan Abrams' (of MSNBC's Live with Dan Abrams pseudo-fame) lukewarm game show, "Rush Limbaugh -- UnAmerican".

Both times Abrams levied said assertion in response to Limbaugh's apparently effective (at least at tweaking the likes of Abrams) Operation CHAOS.

Which is what Limbaugh has dubbed his call for Republicans to cross over -- where legal -- to vote for Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Democratic Presidential primaries. In so doing he hopes to prolong as much as possible the Democrat primary process.

Limbaugh began Operation CHAOS in advance of the March 4th primaries and primary/caucus held in Ohio, Rhode Island, Vermont and Texas. It appeared to be at least somewhat effective beyond just ruffling Abrams' feathers, as HRC won three of the four (losing only in Vermont). Which is when Abrams first resorted to Limbaugh name calling -- at least in this regard.

Editor's Note: This originally appeared in Human Events today -- Monday, March 24th.

The Big Three Networks and Their Plan to Protect Obama (PPO)

Why did it take until Thursday March 13, 2008, for the nation to begin to learn about Barack Obama's pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright? The man whose Trinity United Church of Christ Obama has attended and generously funded for seventeen years? Whom he had publicly and repeatedly cited as his mentor and had named as a campaign advisor? Whom he chose to perform his wedding and baptize his two daughters?

Because, until then, we were in the midst of Phase I -- preventative medicine -- of the media's version of campaign health care for the Senator's Presidential bid. Call it the Plan to Protect Obama (PPO).

The Reverend Wright story had been percolating beneath the surface for several years. It finally broke through to widespread dissemination last week. A picture is worth a thousand words -- moving pictures with audio of Wright's anti-American, paranoid rantings from the pulpit have finally inspired many more than that.

Like Colored and Minded

This is past a bit ridiculous, is it not?

Agence France-Presse (AFP) yesterday disseminated to its client list a headline and photograph caption labeling sex scandalized and self-ousted New York Governor Eliot Spitzer an (R), when he is in fact a (D) -- emocrat.

They then responded -- to correspondence on the subject of their error and the error itself -- rather meekly.

AFP having only corrected their copy -- leaving myriad errors strewn throughout the print and web worlds -- left wide open the possibility that others would follow their poor suit.

And indeed someone has.

Not Minding Their Ps & Qs

We on Thursday brought you the Agence France-Presse (AFP)'s ludicrous labeling of self-ousted New York Governor Eliot Spitzer as an (R). This after a week's worth of the Gong Show Media's failure or utter refusal to ascribe any Party affiliation to the man.

Well, we have heard word from the horse's ... mouth.

DScott, an intrepid NewsBusters participant, contacted AFP to point out their inanity. And in the wee small hours of Friday morning -- they wrote back.

DScott was generous enough to share it with us, and we now, in turn, share it with you:

From the ridiculous to the absurd

Contemplating the Switch

Those of us who have been participating in the Eliot Spitzer Media Waiting Game -- halting our respitory activity in anticipation of the Jurassic Press actually ascribing Party affiliation to the recently resigned Big Apple Governor -- can finally breathe easy.

The Agence-France Presse and Yahoo! have teamed up to finally do what's right.

Only they do it so VERY wrong.

Democrats dialing for damsels don't get labeled with the big "D"

Changing His Mind

Ronald Reagan often said "I did not leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left me."

For floundering and foundering New York Governor Eliot Spitzer -- a twist on the Gipper's words. Spitzer didn't leave the Democratic Party: the Media just didn't see the need to mention the fact that Spitzer was - at least until noon Wednesday -- one of the most powerful Democrats in the nation.

On Monday afternoon, the Big Three Networks (NBC, ABC and CBS) and the Associated Press led the charge of the wall-to-wall coverage of the breaking news that Spitzer was involved with an interstate prostitution ring. And with near unanimity they failed to mention that Spitzer is a Democrat.

Spitzer - who since his years as the Big Apple's swashbuckling anti-capitalist Attorney General the Press has glowingly called the Champion of the Everyman -- was caught on one or more wiretaps dialing for damsels to the tune of $5,500 an hour.

Only the press can fail to see the irony of calling someone who inherited $500 million - and who hires ladies of the evening at hourly rates equal to a semester's tuition at a state university - a champion of the everyman.

[H/t: TS III and the Life of Rubin. Video below the fold.]

The Media, as Sisyphus, Unwinding its Terror Tale

There is a push by the Jurassic Press -- in two directions at once -- to frame just-so their presentation of the murder and murderers engaged in the attempted global implementation of political Islam.

One such shove was again demonstrated by the New York Times this past February 13th. The Media attempt to present these bits of human flotsam -- and their family members and friends -- in the most sympathetic of possible lights. The Times portrayal of the mourning father and grandfather of recently rubbed out Hezbollah serial assassin Imad Mugniyah -- responsible for amongst many other atrocities the 1983 bombing of the Marine Corps barracks in Beirut (American death count 241) is nothing more than another attempt to humanize these inhuman creatures.

The other Press effort underway is the minimization of the evil of these acts and actors. There is even a feel to some of these reports that those delivering them almost do not wish to have to do so, but are forced to by circumstances and forces (the Internet, anyone?) beyond their control.

Key facts that would exhibit the depths of barbarism mined by these men (and women and, sadly, their bloodletting-by-proxy children) are left out.

Unfortunately, it is not what you think

Sorely Displeased

It seems it all depends on who is doing the asking.

ABC News spent a good portion of last week's morning programming in deep prostration and self-analysis in response to criticism that their journalistic presentation suffered from partiality.

Could it be? Had we at the Media Research Center (MRC) -- after twenty-one years of protracted press analysis and serial and sober exposition of liberal bias in all manner of broadcast and print reporting -- finally saturated the consciousness of a member of the Network Big Three?

Sadly, no.

Before ...

Those of us on the Right side of things have a profound disdain for what has become known as Che Chic -- the rampant popularity amongst the ignorant and idiotic portions of society (ours and elsewhere on the globe) of the recently retired Fidel Castro's designated Revolutionary hit man, Che Guevara.

Shirts, hats, and flags bearing the likeness of the Central and South American Communist assassin have adorned the bodies, heads and campaign offices of some of the world's finest mindless.

So it was with joyous exhuberence that I came upon the current issue of Mad Magazine whilst strolling through the grocer's this afternoon.

For the cover art alone (below), it was indeed an absolute must purchase.

Standard-free journalism on parade all day on NBC's Sunday

Forgotten But Not Gone

It was another do-as-we-say, not-as-we-do day for the National Broadcast Company this past Sabbath.

Over the weekend NBC offered up their latest versions of Tim Russert's Meet the Press and the Chris Matthews Show -- the latter being political television's answer to Jerry Springer. In them we were treated to two more glittering examples of all that is wrong with the Jurassic Press.

That being the woeful lack of journalistic ethics demonstrated by those at the heights of the media mountain, and the utter shamelessness they and their colleagues exhibit upon their being outed as amoral hacks.

Hit and run reporting on John McCain

Cheap Shots Fit to Print

This would make even the Daily Kos and MoveOn.org blush.

Well, maybe not. But still, ... .

The New York Times on Wednesday evening went to the web with "For McCain, Self-Confidence on Ethics Poses Its Own Risk", an innuendo-filled and fact-deprived 3,000 word ramble on the 1999 professional interactions between now virtually certain Republican Presidential nominee John McCain and lobbyist Vicki Iseman. They then extrapolated the unproven impropriety of this alleged "relationship" into a broader questioning of McCain's ethics.

Both McCain and Iseman flatly deny the affair. Their refutation, and the Times' protracted inability to gather any evidence to the contrary, should in no way have served to prevent them from levying the accusation in long form print, apparently.

At least according to "Vagina Monologues" playwright Eve Ensler, and Jane Fonda.

Apparently the Today show had not had enough of this dynamic duo earlier in the program, when the fabulously classy Miss Fonda used another word for "vagina" that begins with the letter "c".

So they brought the pair back for the 10 o'clock hour, and America was again regaled with their brilliant and insightful perspective. A perspective, and a vernacular -- it must be noted -- that would get any man on the planet at the very least slapped silly.

The video, Miss Ensler's political genital declaration (which we think grossly underestimates the chronology and the total) and Miss Fonda's in-depth analysis of New Orleans' vagina-ness, follows below.

The February 13th New York Times online contained fifteen "Pictures of the Day". Their #1, lead photograph was what you see to the right, with the following description (emphasis added):

Security officials in Lebanon said Imad Mugniyah, 45, a senior Hezbollah military commander, was killed by a car bomb on Tuesday night in Damascus, Syria. Mr. Mugniyah had been accused in a series of bombings, hijackings and kidnappings during the 1980s and 1990s, including the 1983 bombing of a Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 241 American service members. Mr. Mugniyah's father, Fayez, left, and grandfather held each other during a wake in Beirut.

In ackowledgment of what he says is the Republican Party's counting on "fear and loathing of Hillary Clinton" to bring together Conservatives and Establishment Republicans behind now presumptive Party nominee John McCain (now that Mitt Romney has suspended his effort), Rush Limbaugh this afternoon announced that he is considering raising coin to assist her in her attempt to win the Democratic nomination over Illinois Senator Barack Obama.