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Starter topic: Is anyone there following the JonBenet Ramsey case? Is there a media bias angle in it?

Pennsylvania Democrat Jack Murtha has become a liberal media darling for his non-stop pounding of the surrender drum, and his jumping on the bandwagon to accuse the Marines of misconduct and covering up an alleged massacre in Haditha, Iraq.

The Haditha talk got started after Marine general Michael Hagee briefed certain members of congress about the start of an investigation into the deaths of at least 20 Iraqi civilians. After some of the briefings, Murtha almost immediately began accusing the Marine Corps of engaging in war crimes.

Trouble is, though, Murtha had not been briefed on the investigation before he began his media campaign. That is not what the L.A. Times reported, however. The paper said, over the protests of Patterico who argued the opposite, that Murtha had been briefed before making his remarks.

Failing to convince the Times to double-check its sources better (whodathunkit?) and with Murtha's office unwilling to correct the record since it might have made the congressman look bad, Patterico took matters into his own hands:

Yes, I'm getting just as tired of this kind of stuff as you are (my bold):

Lebanese civil defense volunteers unload a coffin from a refrigerator outside the Hakoomy hospital in port city of Tyre, southern Lebanon, Wednesday, Aug. 16, 2006. At least 842 people were killed in Lebanon during the 34-day campaign, most of them civilians. Israel suffered 157 dead _ including 118 soldiers.(AP Photo/Sergey Ponomarev)

According to the Associated Press "most" (by definition more than half; at least 421) of those who died were civilians. Considering AP's recent track record in Lebanon, I'm disinclined to believe their claim. Their vague figures run in opposition to what we see here from Strategy Page:

On the ground, Hizbollah lost nearly 600 of its own personnel, and billions of dollars worth of assets and weapons.

Ynet News, citing the IDF as a source three days ago, states that 530 Hezbollah members have been killed.

If the Hezbollah deaths cited by StrategyPage and Ynet are correct and the AP's overall casualty count is close to accurate, then more than 60% of those killed were Hezbollah fighters, even as Hezbollah attempted to hide behind old women and children.

Imagine Bill Clinton in the setting shown here. Would he be standing at arm's length, tentatively extending a finger? Never! He'd be right down there hugging the child, probably - for that matter - getting an arm around Mom too.

That, in a nutshell, captures the problem campaign ad makers have in softening Hillary's frosty image.

There I was on the couch this morning in full pajamahadeen mode, searching for nuggets of MSM bias with which to titillate NB readers, when for the first time a Hillary campaign ad popped up. It's standard stuff. The theme is Hillary 'Standing Up': standing up for jobs, for military bases, for health care - seems the senator never sits down!  As I type this, a freeze frame shows a nicely-coiffed Hillary in a striped pink shirt and sporting a single strand of pearls. On a desk in the background you can discern family photos: Bill, Hillary and Chelsea in one, what looks like a young Chelsea as a ballerina in another.

This morning's Washington Post features a Reuters wire service story by one Parisa Hafezi about the Iranian Holocaust Cartoon exhibition that just opened in Teheran ("Iranian Exhibit Takes On the Holocaust").  The reporter gives the idea that the competition and exhibit are all about challenging the Holocaust and testing free speech. 

"This is a test of the boundaries of free speech espoused by Western countries," Masoud Shojai, head of the Cartoon House, which helped organize the exhibition, said as he stood next to the Statue of Liberty drawing.

In fact. almost all the cartoons equate Israel or the US with the Nazis, as part of Teheran's ongoing propaganda war against the Jews.  The point isn't to question the Holocaust - the point is to deligitimize Israel.  In fact, most of the cartoon implicitly accept the Holocaust as true, otherwise the comparisons of Sharon to Hitler wouldn't make any sense.

Here are the facts:

On 9/11, the occupants of a hotel right across from the WTC flee their rooms.  A hotel security guard informs the FBI that in the room-safe of an Egyptian hotel guest, he found an aviation radio.  The radio could be used to communicate with airborne pilots.

The Egyptian, Abdallah Higazy, who is attending college in the US, is arrested, and undergoes tough interrogation, including suggestions that his family could be subjected to investigation by Egyptian security.  After offering various implausible stories, the Egyptian admits that the radio is his and that he stole it from the Egyptian air force.  He is charged with lying to investigators.

A month later, an airline pilot who had been staying in the hotel returns, looking for his radio.  Turn out it was his.  The security guard who reported having found the radio in the Egyptian's room had lied to the FBI. It was apparently his twisted means of involving himself in the 9/11 story.

Higazy is freed, never having gone to trial, much less having been convicted of a crime.The security guard is charged with lying to the FBI, convicted and given a prison sentence. 

Sounds like the American legal system worked pretty well, doesn't it?  Not to Bob Herbert of the New York Times.  According to his column of this morning, The Tyranny of Fear [subscription required],

"All the authorities have to do nowadays is claim that a case is linked to terror and they can get away with just about anything. The rule of law is succumbing to the tyranny of fear."

The Washington Post kept at its molehill "Macaca" scoop against George Allen Thursday, but not on the front page. Here's the latest coverage, in review:

-- With the headline "Here's the Big Hairy Deal," the most prominent coverage is on top of the front page of the Style section, a series of photos explaining that the demeaned Democratic cameraman/spy S. R. Sidarth was actually wearing not a mohawk or a mullet, but a "moo-lette," which is apparently a hot style in Spain. (Counter-spin to the Post: if Allen was joking about Sidarth being a representative of Hollywood-screenwriter Jim Webb, joking about the exotic Hollywood lifestyle vs. Virginia's, does not the fancy Spain-hair prove the oh-so-cosmopolitan point a bit?)

First Reuters had a photo scandal to face. Now Go Pundit Go has discovered that Reuters is currently employing a former writer for the People’s Daily World, a Communist Party USA publication. And it turns out his propagandistic tendencies haven't left him, as he recently wrote a glowing review in the Financial Times on how Cubans are dealing with their leader's poor health:

"Cuba remained calm on Sunday as people engaged in voluntary work, cleaned neighbourhoods and donated blood in Mr Castro’s honour."

You can see Marc Frank's latest Reuters work here.

From the Herald Sun:

"We the undersigned are pained and devastated by the civilian casualties in Israel and Lebanon caused by terrorist actions initiated by terrorist organisations such as Hezbollah and Hamas," the ad reads.

Some of the signatories:

Nicole Kidman, Michael Douglas, Dennis Hopper, Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, Danny De Vito, Don Johnson, James Woods, Kelly Preston, Patricia Heaton and William Hurt.

The list also included famous directors and producers. This takes a lot of courage, not so much because of danger from terrorists...but from their colleagues.

Update (8/17/06 8:42PM): You can read the ad with the full list of names here. Thanks to Shawn99

On Wednesday's Countdown show, while reporting on a recent Zogby poll which found that more Americans can name two of Snow White's dwarves than can name two of America's Supreme Court justices, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann took the opportunity to joke that Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia are "Dopey and Grumpy." The Countdown host also took a shot at President Bush by bringing up Bush's failure to name world leaders in a pop quiz during an interview with Boston TV journalist Andy Hiller in November 1999, and suggested to comedian Mo Rocca that Bush's lack of knowledge is to blame for "current world affairs." Olbermann: "Can you think of any consequences at all that could have stemmed from that candidate's level of knowledge? Is that being reflected at all in the current world affairs?" (Transcript follows)

Libanoscopie, a Lebanese Christian website, quotes a military expert to dismiss Hezbollah's claims of victory over Israel (this is the site that accused Hizballah of putting handicapped children in the building at Qana, then drawing Israeli fire by firing rockets from the roof).

The site is published in French. I've translated below:

Hezbollah's Fictional Victory in Lebanon

After 34 days of fighting, Hezbollah's secretary general [Hasan Nasrallah] is claiming victory, his supporters strolling to their hearts' content on the still smoking ruins of what were, a month ago, a hamlet, a village, a city; now a district where multi-story buildings have been reduced to powder, devastated by a wind that destroyed the major part of its existence.

Jim Cramer, the host of CNBC’s "Mad Money," appeared on the August 16th edition of "Today." Guest-host Lester Holt quizzed the always verbose financial adviser on which stocks are best in an age of terror. Holt prefaced the piece, which aired at 7:14AM EDT, by noting that Americans live in a volatile age and that he wasn’t advocating exploiting unrest in the Middle East, but that investors must react to such developments. Cramer agreed, saying that profiting from such pain "sounds ugly." A few minutes later, prompted by a question about buying stock in oil companies, he responded this way:

Cramer: "That's the profit area. You got to where I can talk about making money off of terror."

John Kifner's NY Times lead story from Beirut today, "Hezbollah Leads Work To Rebuild, Gaining Stature," is depressing enough on its face without typical Times labeling slant like this:

"Hezbollah’s reputation as an efficient grass-roots social service network -- as opposed to the Lebanese government, regarded by many here as sleek men in suits doing well -- was in evidence everywhere. Young men with walkie-talkies and clipboards were in the battered Shiite neighborhoods on the southern edge of Bint Jbail, taking notes on the extent of the damage."

UPDATE: There's now audio up at Washington Post Radio of Greenwell talking about this "growing trend." See below the jump for more on that.

In today's Metro section of The Washington Post, staff writer Megan Greenwell took a sympathetic look at liberal suburban dumpster divers who call themselves "freegans.":

Prince Frederick, Md teen Bryan Meadows “considers himself a ‘freegan,’” Greenwell wrote, describing the term as “a melding of the words ‘free’ and ‘vegan’” because Meadows “tries not to contribute to what he sees as the exploitation of land, resources and animals wrought by commercial production.”

Summer lovin', had me a blast

Summer lovin', happened so fast.

The opening lyrics to the signature song in the musical Grease are apt to describe the media's summer fling with global warming alarmist Al Gore.

A new study by Rachel Waters and Dan Gainor of the MRC's Business & Media Institute (BMI) documents the love affair.

Even with the extensive media coverage – more than one network story per day on average – Gore’s film spent only one week in the top ten. The film only made it to the number nine position.

By comparison “X-Men III – The Last Stand” had only had 25 appearances on the networks in the same three-month period. The third installment in the X-Men series raked in more than $233 million in the U.S. Gore’s documentary has brought in less than $22 million. That means X-Men pulled in 10 times the money with one-third the TV appearances.

On the Chicago Tribune's front page today is the story of an illegal immigrant who's taken refuge in a Chicago church to avoid deportation. The headline is "Act of faith, defiance" and the article includes a color photo of the woman and her son. Yesterday's Tribune coverage on the event noted: "The church's pastor, the Rev. Walter Coleman, said his congregation decided to offer Arellano refuge after praying about her plight.. . . 'She represents the voice of the undocumented, and we think it's our obligation, our responsibility, to make a stage for that voice to be heard,' he said."

Walter Coleman? Could that be Walter "Slim" Coleman, a longtime left wing activist? Yes, it is.

Comparing your enemy to Nazi Germany or Hitler is nothing new, but on Don Imus's radio show, CNN reporter Jeff Greenfield compared Israel to a whole host of history's evil people.

“I’ve never heard it explained adequately how you solve a problem where two different people think God gave them the same piece of land. I mean, what actually, we’ve seen how you’ve made progress. And what happens is, at some point, and I don’t just mean in the Middle East, at some point, to be blunt about it, somebody gives up something. You don’t conquer them, you know, like Gormany and Japan after World War II.

DeKlerk gave up, in the best possible sense, South Afirca – he said, ‘we can’t keep this going any more.’ The colonial forces, the British and French and others said we can’t run this part of the world anymore.

Links, rants, and discussions about miscellany.

When the Democrats think they have embarrassed Sen. George Allen, it's front-page news. But what about when Allen's camp think they have mightily embarrassed Democrat opponent Jim Webb? One example came in a debate in late July, where Allen showed that Webb didn't know as much as he should about the state he's running in:

At a debate Saturday in Hot Springs, Allen surprised challenger James Webb by asking what he thought of [Craney Island], never mentioning the planned [cargo] terminal. Webb, who is making his first run at office, was forced to admit he didn't know what or where it was, causing Allen to get a chuckle out of the audience when he said, "It's in Virginia."

The fall campaign period for The Washington Post has clearly begun, as the Post has judged Sen. George Allen's "macaca" remark to be worthy of the front page again on Wednesday. This installment notes that "Democrats, left-wing bloggers, and civil rights groups called him 'insensitive' and 'racist,' while some conservatives called him 'foolish' and 'mean.'" The story ends by quoting National Review editor Rich Lowry from The Corner yesterday saying Allen shows a "mean streak." But there's more proof of the double-standard on demeaning Indians. On January 7, 2004, Sen. Hillary Clinton apologized for a bizarre joke about how Mahatma Gandhi ran a gas station in St. Louis. The Post buried her apology on page C-3 in the "Names and Faces" gossip column, with just 200 words:

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton apologized yesterday for joking that Mahatma Gandhi "ran a gas station down in St. Louis." The New York Democrat made the remark Saturday at a fund-raiser in St. Louis for Senate candidate Nancy Farmer while Clinton was introducing a quote from Gandhi. Many in the crowd of 200 laughed, and Clinton said: "No, Mahatma Gandhi was a great leader of the 20th century." She then quoted the Indian independence leader as saying: "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."

We all remember how the MSM climbed all over Hillary Clinton when a few years ago she thought it was funny to claim that Mahatma Gandhi "ran a gas station down in St. Louis." Or more recently when she made her "plantation" remark.

And of course we recall the liberal media saying it was a career-ender for Joe Biden to have said "you cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin' Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. I'm not joking,"

Or not.

David needs the umbrella to complete his Neville Chamberlain impersonation. In an Op Ed in today's Washington Post David Ignatius applauds the disastrous UN-brokered ceasefire:

The Lebanon war was damaging for Israel, the United States and, most of all, Lebanon itself. But it may have taught everyone a lesson that will be immensely important to the future of the Middle East: The solutions to the big problems that afflict the region are not military but political.

Meanwhile, the same edition of the Post reports Hezbollah's continued refusal to disarm. It's painfully obvious that Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon without destroying Hezbollah will mean even greater suffering and bloodshed when the West finally decides to deal with the problem.

Thanks to some intrepid digging from commenters Lancelot and Harris at EU Referendum, another video of the events at Qana has been found. This is one that I have never seen before and really shows what was going on that day. It is truly a must see for anyone that believes that the photos at Qana were staged. It completely debunks the "our photographers do not set up photos" and "the rescuers were not holding up the children for photos" claims.

Believe it or not, it is a link from Wikipedia of all places. Here's the direct link to the video. If you can't the video to load through the direct link, go to Wikipedia and scroll down to External Links (Resources) and click on the first video listed. The video is approx 13 minutes long and does have a good bit of anchorperson commentary in Arabic. Also be advised that some of the images are graphic...

Pay close attention to this footage...

At 0:53 there is new footage of Mr. Green Helmet serving as director of the scene. He's standing over some victims and gesturing to someone off camera. One thing is for sure - he is in NO HURRY in this footage.

At 8:29 we see Mr. Green Helmet taking off for his run with the little girl in the multicolored pants. What makes this interesting is Mr. Green Helmet is standing still with the child, then turns and starts off at a quick pace. As Mr. GH turns, a cameraman crosses behind him. It is obvious that Mr. GH was posing with the child for the cameraman prior to his "run".

This is a classic MSM mistreatment of the US military. That it comes in the midst of war is distressing, but not unexpected from them, unfortunately.

The AP (it sure seems that they are more busy spinning than reporting stories these days, doesn't it?) has posted a story that The New York Times placed on their news feed today about how Military recruiters have "increasingly resorted to overly aggressive tactics" to get new recruits.

But, it seems that an undue focus in the report on the rhetoric obscures the fact that there really aren't that many abuses statistically. Certainly one abuse is too much (perfunctory exclamation over), but the tenor of the story is that there is some catastrophic rise in such abuse. The numbers, however, say differently, despite the overblown rhetoric.

I'll get to the good stuff in a minute. But before I tell you just how Mark Green went about slurring VP Cheney, President Bush and religious conservatives, let me explain why he went out of his way to defame them in the most obnoxious possible manner on this evening's Hardball.

Mark Green is about to lose to Andrew Cuomo in next month's New York Democratic primary for Attorney General. The latest poll has him eating Cuomo's dust by 18 points. And that was before the final nail in his coffin - yesterday's AFL-CIO endorsement of Cuomo. Green has a history of losing. He lost to Al D'Amato for senator. He did manage to get himself elected consumer commissioner of NYC, but then lost to Bloomberg for mayor. His impending loss to Cuomo will in all likliehood mark the end of his elective political career. Any future run could put him in Harold Stassen territory.

A friend e-mailed me that Mark Ambinder at The Hotline (formerly of the ABC News Political Unit) has his own analysis of the WashPost "macaca" mania -- Allen's campaign has upset the Post:

The death-knell for Republican candidates in Northern Virginia has been the active hostility of the Washington Post. Usually, a GOP candidate can neutralize the problem by neutralizing the Post -- not alienating the beat reporters and keeping the editorial page from beating the snare drum.

Two signs today that the Allen campaign has seriously angered the Post. First, there's the A1 placement of a story that is arguably interesting and compelling but not earthshatteringly newsy. Within the story, there's a hint that Allen's campaign manager, Dick Wadhams zoinked off the reporter who called him.

This past Sunday, on CBS’s morning show Sunday Morning, Nancy Giles offered commentary on the foiled terror plot in London, and noted that she takes no comfort that this plot was foiled. Additionally, she used her segment to opine that news of the terror plot is just a "distraction" from what she considers more important issues, and offers scathing criticism of the Department of Homeland Security.

Giles began:

"Thank God for Scotland Yard and the people of Great Britain, because I feel more protected by them than the agencies here at home..."

Scotland Yard indeed deserves credit for infiltrating this terror cell and disrupting the plot to blow up airplanes bound for the United States. But what about foiled terror plots here at home? Or the fact that there has not been a terrorist attack here in the U.S. since the tragedy of September 11, 2001? Giles never mentions the U.S. successes in the war on terrorism. Given these facts, it would seem the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies, the CIA and the entire intelligence community, and all others charged with protecting America from terrorism are doing a remarkable job in keeping us safe and are just as deserving of praise as Scotland Yard.