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In Washington these days, all eyes are directed to the White House as literally the center of the political universe. President Bush’s job approval rating is the benchmark by which the left measures his clout – and by contrast, its own. When he is brought low, it means they are having a good year.

This is especially true for the national news media, which can barely refrain from a collective self-satisfied smirk these days. But here’s the funny thing. Nobody looks at <ital>their<ital> approval rating. A Harris poll in February found that only 25 percent said they have a “great deal of confidence” in the White House – but only 19 percent had great confidence in TV news, and only 14 percent for “the press” in general.

In the latest liberal media press release disguised as a news story, Bill Clinton has now provided his own audio tour of the Clinton library, reports Jill Zeman of the Associated Press from Little Rock, and it seems to have a lot of boasting against Republicans of the "you can't stop me, you can only hope to contain me" variety.

At the impeachment exhibit, Clinton says, "So when I won, it was a profound sort of psychological shock to a lot of them," he says of his opponents, with a chuckle. "Then they went into overdrive fighting me. They weren't accomplishing anything, just banging away."

As Letterman might say, isn't it "banging away" that started this whole trouble in the first place?

CNSNews.com has an exclusive interview with Ann Coulter today as her book "Godless" The Church of Liberalism" hits the book stores. She tells Randy Hall that abortion is the "virgin sacrifice" of the liberal "religion" she describes in the book. Coulter goes on to say that one of the main goals of the American public education system is to force small school children to become atheists. Coulter takes on the spectrum of what she considers liberal doctrine, ranging from global warming and stem-cell research to "dry" toilets. Here's a sampler of her lines:

Cybercast News Service: During his May 10 appearance on the "700 Club," Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean said: "One of the misconceptions about the Democratic Party is that we're godless and that we don't have any values. The truth is we have an enormous amount in common with the Christian community, and particularly with the evangelical Christian community." How would you respond to his statement?

Ann Coulter: Who knew Howard Dean had a sense of humor?

Matt Lauer has two different sets of standards for politically provocative authors. If you are on the left he laughs with you, if you are on the right he slams you. On this morning’s Today show Ann Coulter’s statements drew outrage from Matt but last October when Al Franken suggested Karl Rove and Lewis Libby be executed for treason Matt and the Today show crew laughed. Lauer’s interview with Coulter got particularly testy when he read excerpts from Coulter’s new book and demanded she defend them. Below are the most explosive portion of this morning’s Coulter v. Lauer showdown

Video clip (2:30): Real (4.4 MB) or Windows Media (5 MB), plus MP3 audio (750 KB)

Open thread "Apocalypse Tuesday" edition.

While considerable attention focuses on Ann Coulter's more superficial charms, from a conservative perspective Ann's real beauty is her absolute refusal to buy into liberal logic, no matter how pervasive. That independence of mind was on display this morning during her 'Today' interview with Matt Lauer. Ann was on to tout her new book, Godless: The Church of Liberalism, released today on . . . 6/6/6 - sign of the devil and all that. [See today's open thread.]

The first example came in the context of President Bush's current push for a constitutional amendment that would prohibit gay marriage. The liberal mantra on his initiative, as exemplified by Ann Curry's performance on yesterday's Today, is that this is a cynical political ploy and a waste of time when there are myriad 'real' issues out there to be addressed.

In the wake of the Ann Coulter interview on Tuesday's "Today" -- specifically the part where Matt Lauer simply couldn't believe Coulter's attacks on 9-11 widows channeling their grief into anti-Bush attacks on TV news shows -- here are a few reminders of how the Kristen Breitweisers of the world (who endorsed John Kerry in the fall) were given the lion's share of attention by network hosts like Matt Lauer.

An MRC study of relatives on the morning news shows found the disparity of anti-Bush victim relatives to pro-Bush relatives was 20 to 3. (The report concluded, "These relatives are entitled to their views, of course. But network viewers are entitled to a little balance, too.")

A week earlier, it was already obvious Breitweiser was doing election-year publicity against Bush:

A new ABC News poll found that by a 22-point margin -- 58 to 36 percent -- a solid majority of Americans believe “same-sex marriage should be illegal,” yet, on Monday’s World News Tonight, ABC anchor Charles Gibson declared that “the polls show Americans are fairly evenly split on this issue.” ABCNews.com headlined its story, “Most Oppose Gay Marriage; Fewer Back an Amendment,” and reporter Jake Tapper pointed out how “forty-five of fifty states have passed either constitutional amendments or laws banning same-sex marriage, including in Democratic-leaning states Oregon and California.” Nonetheless, a seemingly befuddled Gibson asked George Stephanopoulos: “Why does the White House think this is a political winner for the President if indeed we're split?" Stephanopoulos explained that “the number of Americans who are strongly opposed to gay marriage is more than twice the size of the number who are strongly for it, and that group of voters who want to block gay marriage is three times as likely to vote on the issue.”

Gibson next relayed what Stephanopoulos characterized as the Democratic spin. Gibson inquired, “why, if the votes are not there for this constitutional amendment, does the Senate spend three days on this issue when there are a lot of issues that perhaps they could do something about it?" Stephanopoulos answered, “The Democrats think their best issue is misplaced priorities, and they say exactly what you say: The Senate shouldn't be spending their time on this when you have high gas prices and a war raging in Iraq." (Transcript follows)

All too often all we get are the bad stories about this war on terror from our Mainstream Media. Not only that but we only hear about our allies when they are quitting their support for US led efforts to combat terror in the world and never when they are in support or do something to help the effort. So, I suppose it isn't beyond belief that we never heard this heartwarming story anywhere in the US Media.

For the last two years, Fran O'Brien's Steak house in Washington D.C. has treated our wounded servicemen from Walter Reed Army Medical Center to a steak dinner on Friday nights. But they recently lost their lease at the Hilton Hotel in D.C. leaving the Friday night dinners in doubt.

Enter the Italian Ambassador and his staff who, on May, 21st, conjured up a full Italian dinner for 27 of our wounded heroes. When Ambassador Gianni Castellaneta, and his wife, Lila, found out that O'Brien's had lost their lease, they decided to step in to substitute lasagna for steak. (See Stars and Stripes article Click here)

On yesterday's This Week (Sun. June 4, 2006), host George Stephanopoulos failed to correct guest Al Gore when he falsely claimed that Gen. Eric Shinseki, the Army's former Chief of Staff, was "cashiered" by the Bush administration in 2003 for testifying that "something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers" would be required for an occupation of Iraq. The truth, as documented at several sites, including factcheck.org, is that Gen. Shinseki had announced his retirement nearly a year before his testimony. Gen. Shinseki had fully served his four-year term, and according to CNN, no Army chief of staff has served longer than four years since World War II.

The Washington Post's Alan Cooperman reported on protesters who staged a silent demonstration during Mass at a Catholic service in St. Paul, Minnesota. The group of gay activists wore rainbow-colored sashes as they went to receive Communion in protest of Church teachings on homosexuality.

Cooperman's description of a subsequent mishandling of the Eucharist refused to condemn the act as objectively disrespectful of the sacrament:

In an act that some witnesses called a "sacrilege" and others called a sign of "solidarity," a man who was not wearing a sash received a Communion wafer from a priest, broke it into pieces and handed it to some of the sash wearers, who consumed it on the spot.

As noted by Tim Graham and Mark Finkelstein, the Today show has already portrayed the proposed Federal Marriage Amendment as nothing more then pandering to conservatives. Liberals will be comforted to know that incoming Today host Meredith Vieira concurs. The View, which Ms. Vieira leaves at the end of the week, featured a same-sex marriage discussion during the June 5 edition of the ABC program. Vieira introduced the segment by snidely stating, "President Bush is getting involved in someone’s marriage other then his own." She then referenced a Newsweek piece that quoted an anonymous Bush ‘friend’ as saying, "...He really doesn't care about this. He's just pushing it because he want to pander to conservatives." At one point she derided President Bush’s motives, saying, "So then it is just pandering." Later on she added, "It’s a response to a base falling out, I think." As Mr. Graham pointed out, liberals like Nancy Pelosi support repealing the "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" ban on gays serving in the military. This is also an attempt at mollifying a political base, but don’t expect Katie Couric’s replacement to mention it.

On this morning’s "Early Show" on CBS, co-host Harry Smith continued his crusade against the war in Iraq, and suggested that not only is the war in Iraq a quagmire, but the whole war on terror is one as well. In an interview with Senator Joe Biden, a Delaware Democrat and probable candidate for President in 2008, Smith accentuated the negative in Iraq without challenging Biden on his positions.

Smith set the tone for the segment with his first question, suggesting that nothing has been accomplished in Iraq:

"The insurgency appears to be operating virtually at will. Have we made no progress there or is there, do you see any signs of hope of this ending?"

While NBC interviewed Joe Scarborough on the "gay marriage" front (and CBS stayed out of the fray), ABC followed up their Claire Shipman report on "Good Morning America" with an interview with very liberal San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom. Typically, co-host Charles Gibson asked about whether this issue is pandering and good politics for Republicans, but not whether it's been pandering or good politics for Democrats.

Gibson began: "We're going to turn next to Gavin Newsom. He's the Democratic mayor of San Francisco, and as you'll recall, a couple of years ago, he ordered city officials to marry gay couples, and he touched off this debate to some extent. And Mayor Newsom is joining us from our San Francisco bureau. It's good to have you back with us, Mr. Mayor...Your opinion on this? Do you think there's any chance, snowball's chance in you know where, that this will become part of the Constitution, or is this just politics?"

Looks like NBC's Matt Lauer isn't missing Katie Couric too much. Emceeing a fundraiser last Wednesday night for the ahem, taxpayer funded Sesame Workshop, Lauer had a good laugh at the expense of Couric. In a bit with Elmo, Lauer uttered what sounded like a set-up line for the muppet:  "Katie is moving on to a wonderful challenge, and it's one of those days that reminds me of that very famous saying..."  Elmo piped in with this punchline:  "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God almighty, I'm free at last!" The following appeared in Lloyd Grove's column:

Matt Lauer was sure in a lovely mood the night Katie Couric left the "Today" show for good.

While NBC's David Gregory described the marriage-amendment battle as a move to placate conservatives on Monday morning, ABC's Claire Shipman's story on "Good Morning America" highlighted opposition to the amendment within the White House. MRC's Brian Boyd found the labeling imbalance was here, too:

Shipman: "He's wading into one of the nation's most divisive social issues again today...Restating his position in the hopes of driving his conservative base to the polls in November." Liberals were unlabeled: "Both pro- and anti-gay marriage forces have been pushing their agendas in state legislatures and courts. Thirteen states have passed bans on gay marriage. Only Massachusetts has made gay marriage legal. The public is divided. Half of Americans, 51 percent, oppose legalizing gay marriage.

Mark Steyn writes in the Washington Times that the media thinks it can finally turn Iraq into Vietnam with what happened at Haditha. Just like elites tried to turn the Abu-Ghraib scandal into an indictment of the other 99.9 percent of soldiers in Iraq, so they will attempt with Haditha.

Anyone who supports launching a war should be clear-sighted enough to know that, when the troops go in, a few of them will kill civilians, bomb schools, torture prisoners. It happens in every war in history, even the good ones. Individual Americans, Britons, Canadians, Australians did bad things in World War II, and World War I. These aren't stunning surprises, they're inevitable: It might be a bombed mosque or a gunned-down pregnant woman or a slaughtered wedding party, but it will certainly be something. And, in the scales of history, it makes no difference to the justice of the cause and the need for victory.

A book about the semi-retired Dan Rather (remember him?) would seem to be a tough sell at this point, even if it carried a catchy title like The Da Rather Code. That said, a biography to be published right around the time Katie Couric takes over the CBS Evening News does juicily report that Rather endorsed the bumping-off of a prominent CBS colleague.

Here's part of today's New York Post Page Six item on the book:

In "Lone Star," an unauthorized bio of Rather out this September, Alan Weisman writes that [Morley] Safer "has not been a friend of Rather's for years, since their days in Vietnam." The final straw came when Rather took over for Safer not long after Safer's jolting report about the burning of a Vietnam village by a platoon of U.S. Marines.

The Capital Times ran a front page story on Memorial Day that was the perfect way for a newspaper to celebrate our military heroes; the cookie cutter foreign war vet who "can't get a job" despite 4.6% unemployment story. Oh yeah, and of course he's homeless.

Well, actually he made the story up. And the checks and balances of the editorial process in today's skeptical journalism climate meant they ate up his story without so much as a phone call to confirm it. The paper says "We've been snookered" with a line suggesting it slipped past due to a holiday weekend. I guess that's what you get for waiting until the weekend before Memorial Day to do your homeless vet story.

At least they observed Memorial Day. [FYI: For more information about how to fight Google censorship, see the comments.]

The Media Research Center's Business & Media Institute (formerly the Free Market Project) is co-hosting a symposium on June 6 with TCSDaily.com at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. on Hollywood's treatment of capitalism on the silver screen. The panelists include Fox News Watch's James Pinkerton, film critic Michael Medved, Clinton acolyte Lanny Davis, and BMI director Dan Gainor.

The free event lasts from 6-9 p.m. and includes free cocktails. Bloggers are particularly welcome.

Seats are still available. Please RSVP to hayek@tcsdaily.com.

As Mark already noted, NBC’s “Today” hit the Federal Marriage Amendment talk this week as a blatant pandering move to conservatives. MRC's Geoff Dickens reported that this was how Matt Lauer began Monday's show: “Good morning. Wedded blitz: President Bush and Senate conservatives kick off an effort today to ban gay marriage,but is it a marriage of political convenience?"

Then, as Ann Curry noted the approaching Senate battle over the “ban” on “gay marriage” (no “so-called” gay marriage or “what proponents call” gay marriage), Lauer repeated himself on the pandering-to-righties talking point: “The President is speaking out in support of it even though he has virtually no chance of having it passed. Democrats say this is all about winning conservative votes in the midterm elections. We're gonna have more on that."

A wacky group of conspiracy theorists who think 9/11 was an inside job on the part of the Bush administration met in Chicago over the weekend, and got a respectful hearing from Times Metro reporter Alan Feuer.

“500 Conspiracy Buffs Meet To Seek the Truth of 9/11” made Page 1 of the Metro section, and that very headline gives the conspiracy-mongers the undeserved accolade of truth-seekers when they’re actually just crawling for scraps of evidence “proving” that Bush, not radical Islamic terrorism, was responsible for 9/11.

Katie Couric's gone, but not to worry: the Today show hasn't missed a beat of liberal bias. This morning's topic was one near and dear to the MSM heart - gay marriage. And sure enough . . .

Ann Curry interviewed MSNBC show host and former GOP congressman Joe Scarborough on the issue. But while Ann theoretically is serving as Matt Lauer's temporary co-host pending the arrival of Meredith Vieira, Curry seems stuck in her erstwhile newsreader mode, dutifully parroting DNC and NY Times talking points.

The basic liberal line on the marriage amendment debate is "why are we wasting time on this when there are so many more pressing issues to be addressed?"  And sure enough, the very first words out of Curry's mouth to Scarborough were: "we are in the middle of a rising public debate about the war with Iraq and Haditha and hurricane season is coming. Why in your view is the president attacking gay marriage now?" Hurricanes and Haditha in one sentence - not bad, Ann. But if only you had worked Halliburton in there, it would have been shades of My Fair Lady: 'in hurricanes, Haditha and Halliburton, amendments hardly happen!'

For you conservatives tired of the to-the-right-of-Attila ribbings, know that liberals sometimes brag up their own ideological bearings. So in the Weekend section of the Washington Post on Friday, obnoxious red-headed comedienne and old "Suddenly Susan" character Kathy Griffin proclaimed: "I'm super, super loudmouth lefty. I'm so far left I'm not even a Democrat anymore [sic]...I'm a Sandinista."

So what's with the I'm-a-Sandinista line? Is it funny to align yourselves with overthrown (by vote) communist dictatorships? A little Googling brought me back home to the January 23 CyberAlert, where I learned this Sandinista line is apparently a regular Griffin riff, as she described her approach to doing comedy for USO tours for the troops in Iraq: "My politics are so far to the left I'm not even a Democrat, I'm like a Sandinista at this point. So nobody wants to hear my blue state liberal crap over there. So I try to keep a lid on it and just try and make them laugh and do a good show."

Those terrorists are really just misunderstood.

The New York Times recently conducted an interview with author John Updike about his newest novel. This interview was revealing of why liberals will never understand this age in which we live. It is indicative of how they just don’t understand the evil we face in Islamofascism. (See story - Click here)

Updike, as obsessed with fallen Christianity as he is with prurient sex scenes, must have seen the writing on the wall while in the midst of penning his newest novel, a sort of thriller titled Terrorist.

The plot of Updike’s new novel revolves around a young man of mixed parentage who is radicalized into the Islamofascist world. He is given the assignment of exploding a bomb in New York’s Lincoln tunnel. According to the interview we will find the book’s main character, 18 year-old Ahmad, a “lovable” sort of fellow.

In this day when we are faced with Islamofascists who have announced their desire to use nuclear bombs to destroy major US cities -- and other cities in the West -- John Updike wants to make a “lovable” terrorist for us to read along with!

This is the typically convoluted response to this era that the left has so descended into. But, this isn’t the only example of the Left’s confusion evidenced in Mr. Updike’s thought process.

Mr. Updike seems only to have come to his protagonist’s background recently:

People magazine, another publicity engine of the Time Warner empire, gives a box to Al Gore (page 35, I believe) to explain "How I'm Saving The Planet." People asked: "His film 'An Inconvenient Truth' warns about global warming. So what is Gore doing about it?"

Here are Gore's answers for the publicity box:

"1. I turn off lights in my house [to conserve energy]. We're getting sensor switches that automatically turn them off when the room is empty.

2. We got a hybrid car recently.

3. We try to live a carbon neutral life. On climatecrisis.org, you'll find a calculator which can add up the carbon dioxide you produce and give you options for neutralizing that.

4. This movie saves carbon dioxide because I don't have to fly and drive places to get my message across."

Elvis Costello in March (on VH-1) at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction concert, before playing with New Orleans legend Allen Toussaint: "I feel very lucky and very proud that music jumped to the aid of New Orleans back in September...But it’s a drop in the bucket for what is needed. There is a lot of things that I could say. I could say something like we are fighting the wrong wars in the wrong countries and not dealing with the people here that are living in this country that are not living right."

Compare that to the Sunday Washington Post mini-review of the new album by Elvis Costello and Allen Touissant, called "The River in Reverse," in which Joe Heim noted: "For creating an album linked so clearly to a city's misery, it's unfortunate that the pair have no plans to donate any percentage of the album's profits to a deserving Katrina charity."

It's old news now: In the election to replace Randy Cunningham, Democrat congressional candidate Francine Busby appears to have told a crowd of supporters that illegal aliens could vote and otherwise aid her campaign against Republican Brian Bilbray.("You don't need papers for voting," she said. "You don't need to be a registered voter to help.") The Washington Post apparently found this too boring to mention in Sunday's Election in California a Cliffhanger by Chris Cillizza on A4.

Busby's comments, circulated in San Diego by radio talk show host Roger Hedgecock, have been widely reported around the blogosphere. Expose the Left posted the news and an audio file on Friday, June 2, as did Michelle Malkin. Many righty blogs linked and commented thereafter, including Wizbang, Powerline, Stop the ACLU and others June 3. The San Diego Union Leader reported the story June 3, including Busby's entertaining explanation that she intended only to say that the under-18 set could work in her campaign. But the Post? Nada. Its story used some of that room instead to falsely describe the Minutemen, in the classic Post Style, as "anti-immigrant." As the old Hertz rent-a-car ads used to say, Not exactly: