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In an otherwise balanced story yesterday on conservative and libertarian efforts to limit a 2005 Supreme Court ruling expanding eminent domain, USA Today reporter Martin Kasindorf concluded his story with a swipe at anti-Kelo v. New London activists by quoting a Georgetown University legal expert.

"The property rights advocates have exploited Kelo to advance a broader anti-government agenda," Kasindorf quoted "John Echeverria of Georgetown University Law Center."

Actually, Echeverria is head of the Georgetown Environmental Law & Policy Institute, and his bias in favor of Kelo and work with the liberal Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), went unmentioned. In doing so, the reader is left with the impression Echeverria is a dispassionate legal observer, or at least one uninvolved in Kelo-related controversies.

Yet on November 4, 2005, Echeverria told New York state legislators, "I firmly believe the U.S. Supreme Court decision" in Kelo v. New London "was correctly decided."

Reports Drudge on himself:

ABCNEWS, WASH POST REPORTERS: 'DRUDGE RULES OUR WORLD'

Here they come...

In the stampede of books attempting to make their mark this season comes THE WAY TO WIN, by longtime political reporters Halperin and Harris.

The political director of ABCNEWS and the national politics editor of the WASHINGTON POST make it official in their new insider tome on DC politics and how it's played: The four words in every newsroom and campaign headquarters are: Have you seen DRUDGE?

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Viewers of this morning's Today expecting a balanced panel discussing Bill Clinton's outburst at Fox News were greeted with James Carville debating...Paul Begala? Meredith Vieira, for the most part, sat back as Carville and Begala pumped up Clinton, rallied the Democratic base and attacked everything from the administration's war on terror to Condoleezza Rice, to Fox News. There was no Michael Smerconish or any other vaguely right-of-center counterpart to make points against Clinton's outburst.

The following is a transcript of the entire segment:

Meredith Vieira: "Norah O'Donnell, thanks. Democratic strategists James Carville and Paul Begala worked closely with former President Clinton, their book, Take It Back: A Battle Plan for Democratic Victory is now out in paperback and updated with new material. Good morning to both of you gentlemen. I want to start with you James."

The Ohio chapter of CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, put out a press release on NewsWire about its success in getting a local car dealership not to run radio ads declaring a "jihad" on the car competition and "Fatwa Fridays."

Instead, will the dealership now run "Religion of Peace" Wednesdays?

COLUMBUS, Ohio, Sept. 25 /U.S. Newswire/ -- The Ohio chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-Ohio) said today that proposed "jihad-themed" radio advertisements for a car dealer in that state will not be aired.

The ads reportedly would have proclaimed a "jihad" on the U.S. auto market and offered "Fatwa Fridays" with sales representatives in "burqas" giving free swords to children.

Yesterday, Senator Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma took to the floor of the United States Senate and gave a passionate and informed speech about Global Warming and the American media's coverage of it. He noted that

During the past year, the American people have been served up an unprecedented parade of environmental alarmism by the media and entertainment industry, which link every possible weather event to global warming. The year 2006 saw many major organs of the media dismiss any pretense of balance and objectivity on climate change coverage and instead crossed squarely into global warming advocacy.

Well, ABC's Good Morning America addressed the Global Warming issue this morning. One might think that the entire point of this morning's report was to prove Inhofe right.

How pathetic is it for a candidate to announce his intention to run for the presidency and the few who have heard about it greet the announcement with almost universal derision? Not quite as pathetic as a newspaper reporter who stretches a not-quite announcement into a full blown story about that candidate running for president. Such was the case with Dean Treftz of the University of Iowa student newspaper, the Daily Iowan.

In a bid to make news where none really existed, the Treftz story begins with this bold headline: "Biden says he's going to run." The story itself, like the headline, starts out boldly enough:

As alert readers have noticed, NewsBusters is now offering advertisers a chance to get your message out. If you're interested in a chance to reach out to NB's 70,000 daily visitors, drop me a line at msheffield@gmail.com or click here.

Instead of exploring the accuracy or inaccuracy of former President Clinton's claims during his temper tantrum directed at Chris Wallace in an interview aired on Fox News Sunday, the ABC and NBC evening newscasts on Monday suggested a larger strategy to motivate Democrats. ABC anchor Charles Gibson framed the event: “When asked about efforts he made to get Osama bin Laden, the former President got angry. Was he really mad or was he using anger to make a larger point?” Reporter Dan Harris proposed: “Unlike Michael Dukakis, Al Gore and John Kerry, who many believe failed to effectively combat efforts to distort their image, the Clintons believe Democrats have to push back hard.”

NBC anchor Brian Williams turned to David Gergen who rationalized the tantrum: “He'd just come off a terrific week as ex-President and raised over $7 billion for worthy causes, walked into an interview with Fox with Chris Wallace that he thought was going to be at least half about his initiative. And then he thought he got sandbagged by this question...which echoes the conservative criticisms.” Gergen predicted: “It's going to be a rallying cry for Democrats because Bill Clinton has sent a very clear message to Democrats. If you get bullied, if they try to roll over you, you've got to punch back and punch back hard. That's the way to win.”

Since one of the main issues at hand was Fox News' alleged bias, you would have thought NBC would have assembled a more 'fair & balanced' panel than James Carville and liberal sidekick Paul Begala.  But just when you thought Meredith Vieira was going to lead a one-sided seance, she actually hit the liberal duo with two tough questions.

Carville provided the opening, ill-advisedly claiming that "not one 'assertation' of fact" by Clinton during his FNC interview has been challenged.  Guess what, James?  We've got some serious 'assertatin' goin' on over he-ah, in the person of Condi Rice, and Vieira was quick to point that out.

Vieira: "Not everybody agrees what he said is fact."

The Washington Post continued their media frenzy against Sen. George Allen Tuesday by putting charges from the left-wing website Salon.com that Allen used the word "nigger" freely as a young man on the top of the front page of the Metro section (at least in Virginia editions). The headline was "Allen Denies Using Epithet to Describe Blacks: Senator Accused of Making Racial Slur During and After College." The Post included horrified denials from Allen's first wife and college friends and teammates, but it had all the damaging flavor of "Allen Denies Beating Wife."

The story by Michael Shear and Tim Craig has at least two signs of bias. First, there's absolutely no comment from, and no mention of the Jim Webb campaign, even as his blogging staffers spread the racist rumors. Second, Salon.com is mentioned without any description of its ideology or history: "Salon.com is an Internet magazine of news and opinion." In the Clinton years, Salon.com often published information the Clinton White House employed against conservatives, such as revealing an old extramarital affair by conservative Republican Henry Hyde. Salon's publisher declared that "these are ugly times and they call for ugly measures." 

NBC's Tim Russert has built a reputation for "Meet the Press" as the Sunday interview show to watch, due to a style that can be both aggressive and substantive. Russert guests are often pressed to respond to long text boxes of criticism or asked to defend their own controversial statements. When Russert goes soft, it's often obvious: the questions get short. In his Bill Clinton interview Sunday, instead of pressing the former president with 300-word questions, the entire list of questions was about 300 words long. One answer from Clinton was longer than the word count of all the Russert questions combined.

Here, in review, is the Russert list of questions to Clinton:

Aaron Sorkin upped the stakes this week in "Studio 60"'s jihad against non-casual Christians. And sadly, it's probably very realistic in its portrayal of how Hollywood views large segments of the American public.

In the premiere of this show about a show, the head of "Studio 60", played by Judd Hirsch, had an "I'm mad as hell" moment on the air and was canned, because the network standards guy wouldn't let him run a skit that mocked Christians. Even though television is rife with shows that mock Christians, and has been at least since the Church Lady first appeared on "Saturday Night Live".

Have you heard that conservatives and Christians involved as part of the radical extreme Christian Right who met over the weekend in Washington DC for the Family Research Council’s Action meeting aptly called The Washington Briefing are in a dire state of distress, depression, despair and despondency? I was shocked as I read through tons of articles from some of the 100 media who attended the briefing.

MSNBC states that the speakers of the briefing, “… expressed scepticism [sic] about what their engagement in 2004 had delivered.” Since Tony Perkins stated that, “I don't think enthusiasm is as strong as 2004," that means, according to the liberals, that the world has crashed and burned for conservatives who voted for President Bush.

Keith Olbermann ended Monday's Countdown with his latest “Special Comment” rant, complete with video from a man on a rack in the movie 1984 as Olbermann described President's Bush's supposedly awful deeds. In praising how, in his interview aired on Fox News Sunday, “Bill Clinton did what almost none of us have done in five years. He has spoken the truth about 9/11, and the current presidential administration,” Olbermann portrayed Chris Wallace, who conducted the interview, as an agent of the White House and delivered the lowest of insults, calling Wallace “a monkey posing as a newscaster.”

On Bush, Olbermann accused him of "cowardice" and argued: “After five years of skirting even the most inarguable of facts -- that he was President on 9/11 and he must bear some responsibility for his, and our, unreadiness, Mr. Bush has now moved, unmistakably and without conscience or shame, towards re-writing history, and attempting to make the responsibility, entirely Mr. Clinton’s. Of course he is not honest enough to do that directly. As with all the other nefariousness and slime of this, our worst presidency since James Buchanan, he is having it done for him, by proxy. Thus, the sandbag effort by Fox News Friday afternoon.” Olbermann concluded his 10-minute plus diatribe: “Mr. Bush: Are yours the actions of a true American?”

Video (10:30, but worth watching for how Olbermann goes off the deep end): Real (7.9 MB at 100 kbps) or Windows Media (6.6 MB at 81 kbps) or MP3 audio (4.3 MB)

I happened to catch Chris Wallace on the Sean Hannity radio show, and heard something new: Two weeks ago DNC chief Howard Dean told Wallace he was "tough but fair." This is an entertaining contrast to Dean's current statement characterizing Fox News as part of the right-wing propaganda machine.

I don't have a recording, but I took brief notes.

Wallace said that two weeks ago, he got lots of emails from conservatives raging about how harsh he was in his questioning of Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice. Dean followed Rice in a separate appearance, and according to Wallace, Dean told him "I can't believe you questioned her that tough." After his segment, Dean signed the guestbook with the comment Tough but fair.

On tonight's Nightly News, NBC anchor Brian Williams played excerpts from former President Bill Clinton's meltdown on Fox News, then turned to an "expert" for "perspective" - former Clinton staffer David Gergen. Gergen and Williams downplayed Clinton's display of anger, calling it a "four or five on a scale of ten" compared to previous private Clinton hissy fits.

Many Americans may have been outraged or just perplexed by Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez’s attack on President Bush as "the devil," but the New York Times saw Chavez’s plug for a Noam Chomsky book as a light front-page feature on Saturday – he’s apparently a Latino male Oprah.

The actual Amazon.com review of the Chomsky book "Hegemony or Survival" is blunt: "Chomsky indicates that America is just as much a terrorist state as any other government or rogue organization." But the Times headline is mild: "U.S. Best Seller, Thanks to a Rave By a Latin Leftist." Reporter Mokoto Rich began: "All the authors currently clamoring for a seat on Oprah Winfrey’s couch might do well to send copies of their books to the latest publishing tastemaker: Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chavez."

Let's play one of our favorite games: WIACHSI, which of course stands for "What If a Conservative Had Said It?"

Ready? OK, let's play. What if a conservative attacked a female liberal icon by calling her promiscuous? How many Dem pols, NOW leaders, assorted Naomi Wolfs of the world . . . and Air America hosts would be popping up all over the MSM to proclaim their outrage?

And yet, on today's edition of Tucker Carlson, Air America host and class-action trial lawyer [nice two-fer!] Mike Papantonio leveled the loose-woman charge at none other than Ann Coulter.

The subject was a new book, "I Hate Ann Coulter", written by four authors who have chosen to remain anonymous out of their supposed fear of "gun-toting abortion-clinic bombing, self-proclaimed wing nuts who follow Coulter."

The incoming top editor of "Newsweek" magazine, Jon Meacham, cast aspersions on the legitimacy of President Bush on the same "Imus in the Morning" broadcast I referenced earlier. Meacham conjured up memories of the 2000 election, asserting that "Al Gore was elected by the American people, but not allowed to serve." Additionally, Meacham gave credence to the left wing blogosphere and claimed that it has been since 1988 since a candidate for president has won a clear majority of the popular vote without "any questions about the count in a presidential election."

President Bush won almost 51% of the vote in 2004, a clear majority. However, this is dismissed by Meacham, most probably because of "questions" of the vote count in Ohio. President Bush won the state of Ohio by 118,601 votes. First of all, it is highly unlikely that any "questions" about the vote would be enough to overturn that type of margin. Secondly, where did these "questions" come from? From the left wing blogosphere, people who would not have accepted a Bush victory by any margin and would have tried to delegitimize the vote regardless.

For the third time in less then a month, CNN has aired a report investigating the connection between falling gas prices and the GOP’s fortunes in the looming fall election. This time, "American Morning" reporter Ali Velshi looked into the conspiracy theory that oil companies are trying to help Republicans by dropping prices. Co-Anchor Soledad O’Brien teased the report this way:

Soledad O'Brien: "Ahead this morning, is there a conspiracy behind the drop in gas prices? Bloggers say there is something fishy going on."

A few minutes later, at 8:24AM EDT, the program’s other anchor, Miles O’Brien, introduced the segment and joined in the theorizing:

Miles O’Brien: "Well, the national average is now $2.38 for unleaded regular. One month ago, it was $2.87. A year ago, it was $2.79. The price is supposed to go even lower as we head toward the election. Hmm."

Bill Clinton’s diatribe against FNC’s Chris Wallace, who dared to question the ex-President about his failed efforts to capture or kill Osama bin Laden, reminded some of the last time Clinton exhibited such vitriol. Back on November 18, 2004, in the midst of a quite positive ABC News prime-time special, "Bill Clinton: A Place in History," about the dedication of the Clinton presidential library, Bill Clinton angrily wagged his finger at Peter Jennings, accusing ABC of conspiring with Ken Starr to “repeat every little sleazy thing he leaked” during the investigation into Clinton’s perjury and obstruction of justice.

The late Peter Jennings, who was never accused of being a conservative, had committed the grave offense of asking Clinton about a survey of historian that had ranked him 41 of 42 presidents on “moral authority.” As recounted by the MRC’s Brent Baker in a CyberAlert published the next morning, that set Clinton off on a self-indulgent discussion of how he and his supporters were supposedly victimized by Ken Starr — and the news media.

Video clip (4:10): Real (3.1 MB at 100 kbps) or Windows Media (2.5 MB at 81 kbps), plus MP3 audio (1.1 MB). Read on for transcript of the segment.

On Monday, a senior "Newsweek" editor, Jon Meacham, defended Bill Clinton’s performance on "Fox News Sunday," calling the interview, fantastic. Meacham also asserted that Clinton was articulate; there was a lot of merit to what he said, and that he was making a good case.

On Monday’s "Imus in the Morning," Meacham gushed over Clinton’s performance noting:

"For anyone who believes that character doesn’t matter in politics, that (the Fox interview) should be exhibit A."

He continued, defending Clinton’s performance:

"At the same time, he was, you know, making a good case that he had, you know, made, moved in the right direction on bin Laden, but flip it round, as we all remember, and you all are talking about, he was handcuffed by his own faults and flaws."

On the Thursday, September 21, 2006, episode of his radio show, host Hugh Hewitt interviewed Thomas B. Edsall, who up until recently was a senior political reporter for the Washington Post. He had been with the paper for 25 years. Through precise and direct questioning by Hewitt, Edsall admitted something that is rarely heard from a liberal these days. In a shocking admission, Edsall articulated that the biases of the mainstream media are "overwhelmingly to the left." He also proposed that Democratic reporters outnumber Republicans "in the range of 15-25 to 1"!

In the interview, as Hewitt and Edsall discussed the rise of conservative talk radio and the biases of the mainstream media, Edsall stated the following:

EDSALL: ... I agree that whatever you want to call it, mainstream media, presents itself as unbiased, when in fact, there are built into it many biases, and they are overwhelmingly to the left.

Liberals at the University of Georgia demonstrated their trademark tolerance by sabotaging the conservative student paper, The Georgia GuardDawg.

Reports the GuardDawg:

Vandals targeted the University of Georgia's conservative student newspaper, The Georgia GuardDawg, Thursday night, stealing over 1,200 newspapers and leaving incendiary and hateful remarks on their distribution bins. Seven of their eight bins on campus were affected. The Georgia GuardDawg had just released their September issue when the thefts occurred.

"Our September issue focused on the issue of free speech. Perhaps these violent individuals should read our paper first to learn the importance of free speech," Kirby stated. "Our principles of free speech and family values are ideals that these perpetrators do not want others to read. They oppose this common sense philosophy so strongly that they committed a crime."

In this morning’s interview with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, Today host Matt Lauer mostly asked serious questions about Pakistan’s role in the war on terror and what more that country could do but right before the end of the interview Lauer asked Musharaff to elaborate on a charge he made about the Iraq war: 

Lauer: "In your book you wrote, quote, 'I never favored the invasion of Iraq because I feared it would exacerbate extremism as it most certainly has. The world is not a safer place because of the war in Iraq, the world has become far more dangerous.' A recent classified National Intelligence Estimate, in this country, draws that exact same conclusion. So let me ask you, do you think then President Bush should be blamed for making the world a less safe place?"

A liberal is someone who will always be able to find the dark lining, so long as it's a Republican sun that's shining.  And so here's the latest dispatch from the No-Good-Deed-Goes Unpunished Directorate of the Department of Dark Linings:

Energy prices are down, maybe heading even lower . . . and that's bad.

So writes HuffPoster Raymond Learsy today.  He begins by citing that irrefutable authority, Al Gore, for the proposition that "we are near the tipping point of climatic catastrophe." He next bemoans that "never or at least rarely ever, has there been a serious discussion on curtailing the availability of gasoline."  By all means, I'd encourage Democrats everywhere to run on that platform!

The four writers of an upcoming Ann Coulter-bashing book say they want to remain anonymous out of fear of violence from "gun-toting, abortion clinic-bombing" conservatives. As long as they don't say a word negative about Islam, their lives are safe. What's more likely is they're afraid of a verbal/written counterattack by Coulter herself, one that is better written and more skillful and targeted at the actual authors.

Reports the New York Post:

THERE'S a good reason why the four authors of the upcoming book "I Hate Ann Coulter!" are remaining anonymous - they're afraid for their safety. "None of us want our real names in the hands of gun-toting, abortion clinic-bombing, self-proclaimed 'wing nuts,' who follow Coulter," one of the scribes tells us. Coulter , who called 9/11 widows publicity-loving "harpies," is shown with a devil's tail and horns on the book's cover. It's only the second time in Simon & Schuster's history that an author's identity has been kept secret, the first being, "Go Ask Alice," a teen drug addict's diary, published in 1971.

It appears that North Carolina Radiologist Ken Shelton, who apparently fed Salon a negative story on Senator George Allen just prior to an election is also quite an Environmental Activist, so much so that it may be linked to the only time Shelton has acknowledged donating money to a political candidate.

Friends of the Falls was formed shortly after then Attorney General Mike Easley and Hendersonville attorney Sam Neill recommended that the N.C. Council of State consider invoking eminent domain on land surrounding the waterfalls if suitable protection and public access could not be negotiated.

As noted in the Salon article, Shelton donated $1,000 to a Sam Neill political campaign. Friends of The Falls is an environmental group and according to this website Shelton is one of its leaders. He appears to be very active with the group.

Jules Crittenden, writing in the Boston Herald, examines the Associated Press' actions in light of the detention of AP photographer Bilal Hussein, captured by Coalition forces with al Qaeda terrorists and a weapons cache earlier this year:

The Associated Press, the reliable just-the-facts news agency you and I once knew, no longer exists. Amoral propagandists have taken over. It is not only in the disturbing matter of Bilal Hussein, AP photograher and al-Qaeda associate, being held without charge in U.S. custody in Iraq that this is evident. But also in the departure from balanced, nonpartisan coverage that has always been the AP’s promise to us, its customers...