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On Thursday’s CBS "Early Show," host Harry Smith and reporter Jeff Greenfield analyzed the effectiveness of YouTube videos for 2008 presidential candidates.The segment described how a an Edwards campaign video "...says let's get serious about what matters," while Giuliani and Romney are examples of how candidates can "...die by YouTube."

After they described how successful videos were for Democrats, Smith decided it was time to analyze the effect on Republican campaigns: "... but there is a whole other backlash on this, as well, right?"

This is some of the analysis of Democratic candidates:

GREENFIELD: ...for instance, Dennis Kucinich, no money, no organization, so he goes to YouTube, puts out an ad. It's not particularly compelling. He's talking about a peace tower as a way of symbolizing peace. This has been seen about 6600 times, which isn't much, but how many times does a candidate like Kucinich get to talk to 6600 people at virtually no expense?"

Wolf Blitzer’s interview of former president Jimmy Carter on Wednesday’s "The Situation Room" demonstrated the CNN host’s catering to prominent liberals. In one question to the former president, Blitzer asked about the ongoing presidential campaigns. "Do any of these candidates, presidential candidates, scare you?" After Carter answered that none of the Democrat candidates scared him, Blitzer asked as follow-up questions, "What about the Republican side?" and "Who scares you the most?"

Later in the interview, Blitzer asked Carter, "By your definition, you believe the United States, under this administration, has used torture?" Carter’s unequivocal answer: "I don't think it. I know it, certainly." This led to a follow-up question from Blitzer on the question of whether President Bush should be impeached. "But you don't want to see any formal charges or a trial?"

Update, 6:10 PM - Video (4:45): Real (3.50 MB) or Windows (2.91 MB), plus MP3 (2.17 MB)

Hillary could have saved CNBC “Street Signs” viewers about 10 minutes of their lives by just saying “Trust me,” when CNBC Washington correspondent John Harwood pressed her on economic issues.

Clinton appeared on the October 11 show with Harwood and “Street Signs” anchor Erin Burnett.

Harwood asked Clinton to respond to a comment made by GOP presidential nominee frontrunner Rudy Giuliani: “Hillary Clinton … wants to put a lid on us. She wants to put a lid on our growth. We want to give people freedom.”

Teasing yet another (manufactured) Ann Coulter controversy, ABCNews.com practically suggested that Coulter is an anti-Semite, and when you follow the bread crumbs, you'll find Media Matters the culprit behind the half-baked cake. "The columnist suggested that the U.S. would be a better place without Jews," teased a headline in the rotating news summary on ABC's Web site (see screencap at right).

Yet in context, it's quite logical to conclude Coulter means that, as a Christian, she would like everyone to embrace Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, hence securing them eternal life in Heaven. Grounded in historical Christian teaching, her desire for all to believe in Jesus (and hence be Christians) is not a racist or genocidal point-of-view, but a loving, religious one, however awkwardly stated it may have been in her recent interview.

The front page tease takes readers to a blog entry at Political Punch by ABC reporter Jake Tapper. The Tapper item in turn links to an article and transcript at Editor & Publisher, furnished by, surprise surprise, Media Matters.

To his credit, at no point in his blog did Tapper himself characterize Coulter as a closet anti-Semite or anything of that nature, although he does take a swipe at Coulter as a hypocrite:

“CBS Evening News” has a history of being tough on businesses that might be engaging in illegal activity or otherwise acting unethically. But there’s one exception – employers of illegal immigrants.

“Jim Zappala says the federal crackdown is killing his business right in the middle of harvest,” CBS correspondent Seth Doane said on the October 10 broadcast. “His onion farm in western New York has been targeted by immigration officials twice in just six months. Workers have been deported. Others are too scared to return.”

Zappala is the owner of Zappala Farms and has openly admitted to hiring illegal immigrants. One solution Doane proposed to Zappala: pay more money and he could get American workers to do the jobs. “I don't think there's any amount of money that we could pay to get workers to come in and hand-clip these onions or help with the field work,” Zappala replied.

On Thursday’s CBS "Early Show," host Harry Smith had on the founder of the left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center, Morris Dees, to discuss "...the ugly news about nooses. Why this symbol of bigotry is suddenly back." Smith then went on to ask: "Is there some way to account for this resurgence in seeing this as a symbol? We've done an internet search. It's popping up all over the place." I think we are all impressed with Harry’s extensive research skills.

Beyond the recent noose controversies at Columbia University and in the Jena Six case, Smith and Dees launched into a litany of examples of racism in America and declared a rise in such sentiments:

SMITH: "You've monitored hate groups for decades now. Do you have a sense that they're flourishing, floundering? Are we -- is there a resurgence? Might this be a symbol of some resurgence?"

DEES: "Well I think definitely it is. In the last five years, we've seen a 30% increase in the number of hate groups. We're tracking at the Southern Poverty Law Center Intelligence Project some 844 hate groups in the United States, and we see that a large percentage of them, the motivation for their increase has been Latino immigrants in the United States."

Here we go again. Another instance of a reporter mocking conservative Christian teaching. And giving an atta-boy to Jimmy Carter to boot.

In an October 11 post to The Skinny blog at CBSNews.com, Keach Hagey took a reductionist and highly stereotypical slant to biblical teaching on Christian households, mocking the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary for offering women "an academic degree in their special, God-given role," which Hagey described as making dinner:

The controversy started when a Mexican bar owner in Reno Nevada flew the Mexican flag above that of the United States. This is illegal under United States Code Section 7, Title Four.  An insulted and offended American veteran, Jim Brossard, felt he had to take action and cut down both flags.  After much controversy in blogs and media, the ACLU released a statement urging the media to "correct the misinformation that it is illegal" to fly foreign flags over the U.S. flag.

NewsBusters reported Tuesday that a British court rendered an opinion concerning Al Gore's schlockumentary "An Inconvenient Truth" citing eleven inaccuracies in the supposedly factual presaging of imminent planetary doom.

As it turns out, the judge, Michael Burton, announced his ruling Wednesday, and he listed only nine key scientific errors in this piece of detritus that should never have been allowed by the Motion Picture Association of America or the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to be marketed as a documentary.

According to the British Telegraph, Burton claimed these "errors had arisen ‘in the context of alarmism and exaggeration' in order to support Mr Gore's thesis on global warming."

Pretty much what climate change skeptics around the world have been claiming since this abomination was first released in 2006, wouldn't you agree?

Here were the nine pertinent errors reported by the Telegraph Thursday:

Is NBC "Nightly News" anchor Brian Williams really a conservative? "Washington Post" media analyst and CNN "Reliable Sources" host Howard Kurtz implied that he is. Kurtz appeared on the October 10 edition of "The O’Reilly Factor" to promote his new book "Reality Show: Inside the Last Great Televsion News War." When Bill O’Reilly inquired on the lack of conservative representation on the network news, this exchange followed.

BILL O’REILLY: What news man at CBS or NBC is conservative?

HOWARD KURTZ: I wanted to make- first of all, Brian Williams, we can talk about him in a moment, probably President Bush’s favorite anchor.

O’REILLY: He just likes his ties.

KURTZ: Has quoted Rush Li- has quoted Rush Limbaugh, reads conservative blogs as well as liberal blogs.

O’REILLY: I know Brian Williams. He’s about as conservative as Les Moonves.

In retrospect it seems less and less surprising that Google ever agreed to the Communist Chinese government's demands on censorship (see here and here). It seems the Internet giant and Democratic campaign contribution engine is banning anti-MoveOn.org ads (h/t Malkin):

It's time for 'Name That Party' again. The besieged mayor of Atlantic City, Robert Levy, resigned today after allegations of claiming false military benefits, according to his lawyer. The lawyer also gave a reason for Levy's disappearance.

Attorney Edwin Jacobs said that the mayor had been undergoing treatment for substance abuse and mental health issues since city officials last heard from him Sept. 26.

However, according to the story in the Los Angeles Times, there were even larger reasons for Levy's disappearance- he was under investigation by Federal officials for falsely claiming military benefits to which he had no right. The Times reported,

Federal officials have been looking into whether Levy, 64, lied about his service in order to increase his veteran's benefits. The mayor was in the Army for 20 years -- serving two tours of duty in Vietnam -- and received numerous medals, awards and citations, Jacobs said.

You know The Washington Post is a liberal newspaper when it hails Democratic grande dames -- in the Home section. The lead story in the Thursday section was "Secretary Albright's Sugar Shakers: And Other Significant Parts of Great Women's Houses." Post reporter Annie Groer touted the effects of "great women" like Madeleine Albright. When Albright ran through her official flower budget as U.N. Ambassador, "she pressed her antique sugar shakers into centerpiece duty in New York and later in Foggy Bottom." A large picture of Albright and her shakers dominated the top of the page.

Included inside among more "Treasures of Great Women" was liberal Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Tang Dynasty-era sculpture of a Chinese woman that sits on her piano.

Your turn...

Surprise! Mika Brzezinski, far from criticizing Jimmy Carter's excoriation of the Bush adminstration, applauds it . . .

View video here.

In a free-swinging democracy such as ours, rare are the restraints on political speech by our elected representatives. One exception are rules of decorum, such as those governing the House of Representatives that prohibit members from speaking in negative personal terms about their colleagues and other officials.

There is a similar, unwritten rule by which former presidents do not criticize their successors. And while the occasional lapse has occurred over the history of the republic, no president has so thoroughly trashed the tradition as Jimmy Carter, who has made stinging criticism of the Bush administration a virtual art form. Earlier this year, for example, Carter publicly labelled the Bush administration "the worst in history."

The Kvetcher-in-Chief is back at it again.

“Jimmy Carter is back in the news tonight,” NBC anchor Brian Williams declared Wednesday night in making true what he, but not the ABC or CBS evening newscasts found newsworthy, “this time because of harsh words for the current Vice President.” Williams proceeded to highlight how “in an interview with the BBC, former President Carter calls Vice President Cheney quote, 'a disaster for America' and 'a militant,' who has been in Carter's words, 'overly persuasive' on President Bush.” A few hours later, MSNBC's Live with Dan Abrams led with Carter's derision with “'DISASTER'?” on screen under a picture of Cheney.

A Reuters dispatch, “Jimmy Carter calls Cheney a 'disaster' for U.S.,” reported Carter's attack:

The MRC's Brad Wilmouth alerted me to a slip of the tongue Wednesday night by ABC anchor Charles Gibson, who didn't catch and correct his error -- at least in the 6:30pm EDT feed of World News. In a brief item on the congressional resolution labeling a 1915 massacre of Armenians as "genocide," Gibson inadvertently said "Americans" instead:

Hard to believe, but there was a political fight in Washington today over something that happened 92 years ago. In 1915, as many as a million and a half Americans were killed by Ottoman Turks...

Video clip (20 secs): Real (600 KB) or Windows Media (700 KB), plus MP3 audio (100 KB)

Ann Coulter did her best to drop a bomb on the October 10 episode of "Tucker" on MSNBC. At the conclusion of her interview, Ann Coulter announced (video) that the National Enquirer was just reporting that John Edwards had an 18-month affair while on the campaign trail. You can read the story here.

Before going any further, this allegation must be met with a healthy degree of skepticism. First of all, the story is originating from the National Enquirer, which in and of itself, raises questions as to the story's reliability. Secondly, Coulter had a notorious run-in earlier this year with Elizabeth Edwards on an MSNBC episode of "Harball." Coulter would have every motivation to repeat a salacious tabloid sex allegation about John Edwards.

With that said, though, you would think that the mere allegation would be worthy of a media frenzy based upon its recent behavior. The media have extensively covered the "bathroom sex" case of Senator Larry Craig. Before that, the media happily reported when Sentator David Vitter's phone number showed up in the records of the "DC Madam." Even before that, the Mark Foley story lingered for a month during a crucial point in the 2006 campaign.

Network morning news programs showcase musicians all the time with concert series and the like, and sometimes musicians make political statements in between songs, as Bruce Springsteen did on the September 28 "Today" show. But usually those segments are fluffy revenue raisers meant to hook audiences with popular musical acts. The politics are notable for their general left-wing slant, but otherwise unconnected to the news reporting on the program or the network.

Not so with Michael Stipe's appearance on the October 10 "Anderson Cooper 360," which will give Stipe and his band REM a platform to make a politically correct ecological statement in line with CNN's upcoming special, "Planet in Peril."

According to CNN.com:

(CNN) -- Rock group R.E.M. plans to debut a song from its upcoming album Wednesday on CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360°" program.

David Herszenhorn's front-page "Political Memo" for Wednesday's New York Times was devoted to the fight over Graeme Frost, the boy pushed forward by the Democrats to deliver the response to Bush's weekly radio address on the State Children's Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP).

The inimitable Mark Steyn is one of several conservative writers unhappy with Democrats "desperate enough to send a boy to do a man's job."

Herszenhorn accused Republicans and "conservative bloggers" of attacking the boy and his family. While not as bad as the local coverage in the Baltimore Sun as outlined earlier by Ken Shepherd, there is a hostile tone:

Warmer winter. No - colder winter. No. Warmer winter, definitely warmer winter.

Last night's network news broadcasts made the Energy Department's most recent prediction for this year's winter climate, released yesterday, sound like a report from Dustin Hoffman's "Rain Man."

On CBS's Evening News, Katie Couric stated that "the government predicted today that temperatures this winter will generally be above average. Even so, it will cost you more to heat your home."

Video montage (1:07): Real (1.81 MB) and Windows (3.78 MB) and MP3 audio (518 kB).

But ABC's "World News with Charles Gibson" led its broadcast with the Energy Information Administration's report by saying "Tonight, news of a cold wind a coming that promises to have a chilling effect on the American pocketbook," and continued to sing a different tune than Couric, professing that "the average American homeowner will pay 10% more for heating during what will be, generally, a colder winter."

On September 29, 2007, Baltimore 12-year old Graeme Frost became the Democratic poster child, literally, for SCHIP. Frost read the Democratic Party's official response to the president's weekly radio address, attacking President Bush for his veto of a Democratic-sponsored bill to balloon federal spending on the 10-year old program.

The Baltimore Sun ran a story that morning noting young Graeme Frost's brush with political football history, and two days earlier ran a gauzy profile on Graeme's mom and dad and their push for the Democratic SCHIP expansion here. But now that conservative bloggers have been raising questions about the portrayal by Democrats and the Baltimore Sun of the family's financial plight, the Sun is hitting back by attacking conservatives bloggers as heartless and obsessive, Michelle Malkin noted on her blog.

On Tuesday's "Good Morning America," co-host Chris Cuomo and media critic Howard Kurtz ignored the role that liberal bias has played in the decline of ratings for the network evening newscasts. At the same time, Cuomo and Washington Post reporter seemed to be proud of the media's ability to turn Americans against the war in Iraq. Kurtz, who has written a book on the subject, asserted, "I believe that these newscasts in 2005 and 2006 played the biggest single role in helping to turn public opinion against the war."

Cuomo agreed and complimented the journalist's analysis. He enthused, "It's easy to say, 'Oh, well. The war was unpopular. People were looking for the unpopularity of it. At some point, the networks gave that to them.' But you have a more penetrating look at it. You take a look at it in terms of the role of the nightly newscasts in shaping the ideas about the news..." According to Kurtz, the top three network anchors kept "framing the story in such a way" that the bad news finally had an impact. And while the two reporters wondered about the effect the iPod and internet are having on network low ratings, at no time did they discuss liberal bias or salient facts such as that journalists backed John Kerry over George Bush by a two-to-one margin.

Those pesky conservative suburbanites and their market forces! They'll be the ruin of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, bellows Anonymous.

Hugh Hewitt and Ed Morrissey have taken on the unattributed complaints of a self-described Star-Tribune ("Strib") veteran, who laments that his beloved paper is becoming a right-wing shill for, gasp, hiring a token conservative opinion columnist.:

The Rake, a local alternative newspaper here in the Twin Cities, published an interesting cri de coeur from "one Strib veteran" about the direction of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. The anonymous attribution wears thin in the first line of the quote:

Never doubt the left-wing tilt of the Washington Post - even the Business section. Today's Steven Pearlstein column delivered the almost universal left-wing outlook on yesterday's GOP debate.

It was bad enough that moderator Chris Matthews didn't ask enough business/economy questions - choosing instead to dwell on capturing Osama or inside baseball about politics. But Pearlstein took a noxious outlook on the debate and blasted former Sen. Fred Thompson in a chat that followed.

"The truth is, when you compare Ron Paul to Fred Thompson on substance, Thompson comes across as a nothing-burger," Pearlstein said during the Post chat. Later on, he got even more mean-spirited.

Tuesday’s Metro section of The Washington Post covered a controversy at D.C.’s George Washington University, where fliers appeared on campus blaring "HATE MUSLIMS? SO DO WE!!" Post reporter Susan Kinzie mentioned that the GWU chapter of the conservative Young America’s Foundation denied the posters were theirs, and Kinzie noted that it was probably a prank, since the fine print at the bottom had the words "'Brought to you by Students for Conservativo-Fascism Awareness' -- and a postscript recommending a BBC video on the politics of fear." But while Wednesday’s article in Metro confirmed that it was a prank "produced by students who were attempting to mock those they thought were trying to stir fear of Muslims," YAF wasn’t named anywhere in the article as the vindicated victim.

Jason Mattera of YAF is rightfully upset: "The Post mentions Young America’s Foundation three times, even though the fliers were obvious hoaxes. Yet the paper’s article today explaining that the fliers were fabricated doesn’t mention Young America’s Foundation even once! The Post will report possible incidents of hate speech, but when those incidents turn out to be contrived, the paper doesn’t vindicate those who were targeted!!!"

With politicians and newspapers like they have in California, it's no wonder the state has become a magnet for millions of illegal immigrants. The latest lunacy? The legislature has enacted a bill giving illegals scholarships to state universities. And the Los Angeles Times predictably wants Gov. Schwarzenegger to sign it into law.

The so-called "California Dream Act" was cooked up by state Sen. Gil Cedillo (D-Los Angeles). In its editorial of today, "Make the Dream Reality," The Times plays lip service to the problem the law would create: "We understand the objections that arise when a society extends benefits to illegal immigrants that once were reserved solely for legal residents. The easier life becomes for those who crossed our borders illegally, the more incentive there is for others to follow."

Exactamundo. But wth its next breath the newspaper brushes off the very problem it identified:

Just when you thought it was safe to turn on your radio again, a major media advocate has issued a strong warning to companies thinking about hiring Don Imus: Don't you dare!

For those that have been out of the country since the beginning of the year, one of the original shock-jocks got himself in trouble in April when he referred to the Rutgers women's basketball team as "nappy-headed hos."

After being fired by CBS Radio and NBC, Imus has been mounting a comeback, and is in serious talks with two leading radio outlets.

Unfortunately, as measured by its press release Tuesday, the National Association of Black Journalists isn't pleased (emphasis added throughout, h/t Dan Gainor):

Your turn. Possible talking point: Any debate post mortems?

At the top center spot of Wednesday's front page -- above those debating Republicans -- The Washington Post spotlights its interview with Hillary Rodham Clinton. The headline is "Clinton Cites Lessons of Partisanship: Senator Says She's Best Equipped to Unite America." (Washingtonpost.com changed its header to "Clinton Cites Her Resilience.")

Since when has Hillary been either a uniter, or a centrist? Post reporters Anne Kornblut and Dan Balz offered little skepticism (and no account of her consistently liberal voting record) in their account of her remarks, summed up with this: "I intend to win in November 2008, and then I intend to build a centrist coalition in this country that is like what I remember when I was growing up."