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An article in today's Los Angeles Times (Mon. 9/17/07) addressed criminal charges being filed in Kansas against the infamous late-term abortionist Dr. George Tiller. According to the article, Tiller faces 19 counts of "aborting viable fetuses without first consulting an independent physician as required by state law."

As often is the case, the Times is unable to control itself in presenting a misleading and biased story. And not surprisingly, the culprit in this journalistic craftiness is Stephanie Simon, whose work we've reported on in the past here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. This time:

A landmark decision concerning car companies and global warming was handed down by a federal judge in California on Monday. Yet, most people are likely not going to hear about it, because the ruling goes counter to the media's agenda.

As reported by the Associated Press (emphasis added throughout): "District Judge Martin Jenkins in San Francisco handed California Attorney General Jerry Brown's environmental crusade a stinging rebuke when he ruled that it [sic] impossible to determine to what extent automakers are responsible for global-warming damages in California."

How delicious. But, there was much more about this decision the press will likely keep from people outside of California:

The CBS and ABC evening newscasts led Monday night -- even before O.J. Simpson -- by trumpeting Hillary Clinton's universal health care plan, a proposal fill-in CBS anchor Harry Smith insisted addresses a vital need: “It's a huge problem. An estimated 47 million are not covered.” Of course, CBS didn't bother explaining how a significant number of those can afford insurance or are illegal aliens. ABC's medical doctor, Tim Johnson, who back in 1993 called Bill and Hillary Clinton “almost heroes in my mind for finally facing up to the terrible problems we have with our current health care system,” praised Senator Clinton's new plan: “Every industrialized country in this world that is successful with health care -- often more successful than we are -- has a partnership between government and the private sector.”

Smith led the CBS Evening News: “She tried to do it as First Lady. Now, as a presidential candidate, she is trying again. Hillary Clinton today outlined a new plan for making sure every American has health insurance. It's a huge problem. An estimated 47 million are not covered.” Reporter Jim Axelrod asserted “Clinton doesn't remind reminding people of her past painful experience in health care reform” because “in the latest CBS News poll, 66 percent of registered voters say her health care experience will help her.” Charles Gibson led ABC's World News: “We start with Senator Clinton, now trying to get to the White House by promising to do something she couldn't do when she was in the White House -- come up with a plan to provide health care for all Americans that would be accepted by Congress.”

Chris Matthews might as well have chanted "No Blood For Oil" throughout the Monday edition of MSNBC's "Hardball" as he sounded like an anti-war protestor as he charged that U.S. servicemen and women were spilling blood for Big Oil, as he questioned: "Are we fighting for the American oil companies for Mobil and Exxon? And they are making these enormous profits because of access to oil over there...Should we put Exxon signs up over Arlington Cemetery and Mobil signs up there, like they have at baseball stadiums?"

Pivoting off a David Shuster report that claimed Alan Greenspan "provided evidence" that the Iraq war has been "fought for oil," Matthews devoted much of the September 17 edition of "Hardball" to that conspiracy theory. The following is Shuster's report followed by Matthews's various "No Blood for Oil," rants:

At the same time Alan Greenspan is out defending the Bush administration from the "no blood for oil" crowd, a man accused of illegally buying and selling oil from Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime is being put on trial.

Looking at the case of Oscar Wyatt, one soon realizes that that Iraq war opponents were hardly the pure and innocent people that the media usually makes them out to be. The leadup to the Iraq war was hardly a struggle between peaceful, loving protesters and nefarious right-wing billionaires, in reality, there were people on both sides who saw Iraq as an opportunity to make money. Somehow, though, we never hear about the anti-war money men. This is odd because while we've heard endlessly about Vice President Cheney's connections to Halliburton, we've heard almost nothing about Oscar Wyatt's boast that he had persuaded Massachusetts senator Ted Kennedy to speak out against the Iraq War. As TigerHawk puts it:

Over at the Intellectual Conservative, writer Gary Larson discusses what he discovered when viewing an episode of PBS's "History Detectives":

Entertaining, a smidgen on the shaggy-dog side, the PBS program showcases four academic “detectives” traipsing around the country tracking down arcane histories of assorted relics. It’s a fun program, a fast hour of delicious cotton candy for us history buffs.

It leads us down paths of little discoveries — a shard of bone, a piece of flag, some old cannon ball. Then a “detective” tells us what parts they played in history, if at all. The joy of watching is in the journey.

The mainstream media’s coverage of the antiwar march in Washington, DC did its best to ignore the extreme Left views that were on display at the protest. A split-second image at the very beginning of Saturday evening’s NBC Nightly News showed some of the extreme views that were on display on signs, which included a call for the impeachment of President Bush for "war crimes," and a sign that cried "9/11 Truth Now!" The full NBC Nightly News report on the march devoted almost a minute to footage of the antiwar marchers, and only 15 seconds to comments from one of the pro-Iraq war counter-protesters who lined the march route. Anyone who tuned in would have to look carefully for any sign of radical views.

Video: Real (1.6 MB) or Windows (1.3 MB), plus MP3 (618 KB)

Both the New York Times and the Washington Post covered the march in their Sunday editions. However, they ignored some of the radical statements that were made from the stage at the antiwar rally before the march. The photos that accompanied both the print edition and online versions of the articles also glossed over the extreme views that were expressed on signs and banners at the march.

This follows up on this weekend's posts about damage done to the Vietnam Memorial in Washington (NewsBusters; BizzyBlog).

The latest comes from the Washington Post (HT Michelle Malkin, who has video):

Monday, September 17, 2007; 2:32 PM

The unidentified substance that was found splashed on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial earlier this month was the result of vandalism, the U.S. Park Police said today.

Sgt. Robert Lachance, a spokesman for the Park Police, said the investigation into the incident is continuing, but the detective on the case had ruled it an act of vandalism. Lachance said he could provide no more details because the probe is still underway.

Two months after the U.S. military declared him as bogus as a three-dinar bill, ABC News continues to identify one "Abu Omar al-Baghdadi" as head of al Qaeda in Iraq [AQI].

Here's the background: a major goal of al Qaeda is to convince Iraqis [as well, presumably, as gullible members of the U.S. congress] that AQI is a home-grown organization with only the most tenuous links to al Qaeda. At a press briefing of July 18th, 2007, Brigadier General Kevin Bergner stated the following:

On Friday’s "Good Morning America," liberal weatherman Sam Champion featured actor/activist Ed Begley Jr. to promote the concept of carbon offsets. The ABC meteorologist gushed over the emotional benefits of this environmental program. He exclaimed, "And you, kind of, pay into them and they fund projects that are doing good work. So you feel better about your energy use by helping create greener energy, basically."

The segment featured no skepticism as to the validity of these offsets. Rather, the tone was set by Champion’s introduction. He lectured, "We just can't help it. But every time we flip on a light switch, we're making pollution..." Later, Mr. Begley excitedly asserted that if enough people purchase carbon offsets, "...Guess what? They're going to shut down power plants."

Barry Manilow epitomizes the liberal reaction to being forced to share a stage with someone with whom he disagrees- instant flight! Manilow is apparently cancelling his scheduled appearance on the mostly-liberal gabfest show 'The View' because new host Elizabeth Hasselbeck is a conservative. According to TMZ, Manilow said of Hasselbeck,

In an exclusive statement to TMZ, Barry says, "I strongly disagree with her views. I think she's dangerous and offensive. I will not be on the same stage as her."

So it seems that is is perfectly acceptable for liberals and/or Democrats to only go where their views will not be challenged, isn't it, Barry?

Since NASA's James Hansen finally released computer codes related to how climate data are collected and adjusted, anthropogenic global warming skeptics around the world have been waiting to see what a scientific examination of this information would produce.

On Monday, Canada's Steve McIntyre, who himself debunked Michael Mann's ridiculous "Hockey Stick" theory as well as identified Hansen's Y2K bug, released information identifying that Hansen recently made additional changes to climate data akin to how companies like Enron used creative accounting to exaggerate earnings and defraud investors.

As published at Climate Audit moments ago (emphasis added, h/t Anthony Watts):

Sure, it was just an acceptance speech at some silly awards ceremony. However, when Hollywoodans say ridiculous things on television that media applaud along with the Hollywoodans in attendance, someone's got to point out the inanity.

As such, when Sally Field said at Sunday's Emmy awards ceremony as reported by the MRC's Tim Graham, "And, let's face it, if the mothers ruled the war, there would be no (expletive) wars in the first place," I can't sit idly by without contesting such nonsense.

After all, it appears Field has never heard of some famous female leaders who brought their nation's to war:

When we put together a packet of the Greatest Hates of the Huffington Post, we didn’t focus on the issue of the blog’s accuracy. Over the weekend, HuffPost blogger Steve Young decided to address my appearance on The O’Reilly Factor to create a fantasy in his mind of how I would crumble under the weight of O’Reilly’s pro-Huffington Post questions. The headline was "O’Reilly Lauds HuffPo as the Most Principled Website on the Internet; Condemns MRC Report." Of course, nothing of the sort happened. Nowhere in this blog does it actually say it’s a bad satire, other than an asterisk, leading to this self-amused sentence at the end: "Apologies if I may not have caught some of the segment's quotes exactly, but I'm sure I got the gist of the truth behind them."

In the middle of this routine, he was right I goofed in dating the nasty John Cusack blog post as 2006 rather than 2005. We’ll fix that. But then he adds his own errors:

It's fitting that now that he's left his post as chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan's words are being as closely scrutinized as they were back in his days at the Fed.

Not carefully enough, though, it seems.

Over the weekend, a media firestorm errupted after the Washington Post printed a news article claiming that in his memoirs, Greenspan said the ouster of the Saddam Hussein government was just about oil.

Unfortunately for the liberal press and blogosphere, Greenspan did not say what was attributed to him. After the news broke, Greenspan called up the Post to say he'd been quoted out of context:

We've had some big changes of late here at NB but we're not the only division of the Media Research Center that's doing big things. Earlier today, the Cybercast News Service (aka CNSNews.com) hired former Human Events editor Terence Jeffrey to head up the online news site:

Today, Cybercast News Service, the online news division of the Media Research Center, is pleased to announce the hiring of Terence P. Jeffrey as its new editor-in-chief.

Jeffrey joins CNSNews.com after serving as editor of Human Events, the national conservative newsweekly, for more than a decade.

"I've known Terry for many years. He's a man of keen insight and extraordinary vision, and we're delighted to have him join us," said L. Brent Bozell III, president and founder of Cybercast News Service and its parent organization, the Media Research Center.

Mimicking NBC's Matt Lauer on "Today" with Tom DeLay a few weeks ago, the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz chose Monday to address a number of political scandals in America, all of them of course dealing with Republicans.

Yet, there was a brewing campaign finance scandal conspicuously absent from Kurtz's list. Need a hint what it might be?

Maybe Glenn Reynolds' comical quip will help: "Hsoot, it's on the tip of my tongue..."

Yep. Nowhere was Norman Hsu to be found. Instead, here's what concerned Kurtz (emphasis added):

Apparently, the world's largest Internet search business believes it has little to fear from those who object to its continued involvement with government censorship in communist China. Google agreed to censor its search-engine results in accordance with government wishes in January 2006. That control regime is still in place, as comparative searches on "Tiananmen" at Google.com and Google.cn readily show.

Oh, company co-founders Sergei Brin and Larry Page have said that what they agreed to do in Mainland China was a "mistake." But that's only because of the fallout, not the cooperation decision itself, as this January excerpt from the UK Guardian shows:

See if you can spot the error in the following opening paragraph from the Associated Press concerning the exploits of soon-to-be-Nobel Prize laureate Al Gore:

So he wasn't elected president. Big deal. How many other presidential candidates have an Emmy and an Oscar to brag about?

Or this one from Reuters:

Your turn...

"War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength" -- Slogan of the ruling party in George Orwell's "1984"

With the health care proposal she is about to introduce, Hillary Clinton adds another spooky non sequitur to the list: Compulsory Coverage is Choice. Will the MSM take notice?

Hillary Clinton will have a hard time triangulating her way out of the thanks the Daily Kos gave her for suggesting that General David Petraeus was a liar. There is no doubt about their appreciation of her "services" as can be seen in the very title of the Daily Kos thread, "Thank you Hillary for calling Petraeus a liar!" Appreciation for the "services" rendered by Hillary was duly noted by Daily Kos blogger, gopher747:

Thank you Hillary for calling out Petraeus for what he is, a liar and a distorter of facts.

While I still prefer an Edwards/Obama ticket, I just wanted to show some progressive blogosphere love here for Hillary for her calling a spade a spade here, and subsequently setting the right wing howling.

Fox’s swear-word hunters were quick on the button at the Sunday night Emmys, including an "anti-war rant" from actress Sally Field. A cursing Flying Nun? AP reported that Field "screeched at the audience to stop applauding so she could finish talking — and then was bleeped by Fox censors as she stammered through an anti-war rant." AP added:

"And, let's face it, if the mothers ruled the war, there would be no (expletive) wars in the first place," Field said, but Fox cut away for much of her comment.

Backstage, Field told reporters that she wanted to recognize mothers who wait for their sons to come home from war. She added, however, that she "didn't have a political agenda."

Told that she had been bleeped, Field responded: "Oh well. I've been there before. Well, good. I don't care. I have no comment other than, oh well. I said what I wanted to say. I wanted to pay homage to the mothers of the world, and let their work be seen and valued."

If there's one thing that the New York Times editorial page has inveighed against for the last six years, it's those horrid tax cuts that the Bush administraton pushed through. But now that the economy might be encountering some turbulence, the Times regrets, of all things, that taxes can't be cut more.

Here's how the Times frames its plaint in this morning's "As the Economy Turns Down" [emphasis added]:

Now, you’re gonna read that headline and laugh imagining that I must surely be employing the best hyperbole. Reuters can’t possibly be touting a story that says wooly mammoth dung could be making global warming worse… could they? I am sad to say that they are, indeed, making this claim in a story on the crackpot theories of a Russian “scientist.”

I know, I know. It seems like an entry from “The Onion” news satire website, but it isn’t. Reuters gives us the pooper scoop in “Mammoth dung, prehistoric goo may speed warming,” posted on the 16th.

Sounding like a bad copy of an old Cheech and Chong skit, “scientist” Sergei Zimov grabs some wooly mammoth dung, puts it to his face and proclaims, "It smells like mammoth dung." Reuters gives him the space to revel in his crappy theory that this millions-year-old, melted mammoth dung is speeding globaloney.

Harvard Magazine, a magazine that caters to the alumnus of Harvard University, gives us the blather of one of their professors, Howard Gardner, who is despairing on how we eeeevil conservatives are taking over his country.

To start with, the short Harvard Mag piece tries hard to explain why anyone should care about Gardner. Apparently it's mostly because of his 1983 theory of "multiple intelligences." This theory holds that humanity has different types of intelligences, that an IQ test cannot measure a person's intelligence effectively, and that our different kinds of intelligence (I've heard it called "genius") is often hard to quantify. Some have a genius in dealing with people, some have their ability in music, some in mathematics, etc. Everyone's great ability is different than the next fellow's. That this particular theory seemed innovative or groundbreaking proves that the only "genius" that people in academia have is that of stating the obvious and pompously proclaiming it to be of great insight.

In Sunday's Washington Post, ombudsman Deborah Howell laid out the internal deliberations behind the Post's decision to shelve two "Opus" Sunday comic strips mocking the character Lola Granola's flirtation with radical Islam. Howell concluded: "I think Post editors overreacted in killing the strips. Comics are meant to be artful, fun and provocative. The two strips were all of that and worth publishing. Let comics be comics."

Worse yet for the Post pluckers, Howell found that the Council for Islamic-American Relations (CAIR) didn't favor the censorship. CAIR's Ibraham Hooper said the strip "poked fun at the strip's characters, not Muslims or Islam. I see hundreds worse on the Internet every day." And:

 

Original Caption:

Outgoing White House Press Secretary Tony Snow, left, leaves the podium at the end of his final on-camera press briefing, Wednesday, Sept. 12, 2007, in the White House briefing room at the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Since the Norman Hsu campaign finance scandal first broke weeks ago, conservatives have wondered when liberal media members will get concerned about how this might impact the presidential aspirations of Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY).

If Sunday's "The Chris Matthews Show" is a barometer, the news is not good for Hillary supporters.

As The Anchoress accurately reported Saturday, NBC's Andrea Mitchell made a statement concerning the Clintons that was absolutely shocking:

A truly extraordinary event occurred on CNN Sunday: Howard Kurtz actually supported President Bush sitting down with milbloggers to discuss what's going on in Iraq.

I kid you not.

When this issue was raised on the most recent installment of "Reliable Sources" - that Bush had a meeting Friday attended by ten military bloggers - it seemed almost a metaphysical certitude the President would be lambasted for catering to the extreme right.

Surprisingly, such was not the case: