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On the Tuesday edition of "Situation Room," host Wolf Blitzer asked Ted Kennedy whether Iraq and U.S. interests would be better off with Saddam Hussein still in power. The CNN anchor spent much of his interview wondering how the Massachusetts Senator would stop President Bush from increasing troop levels in Iraq. However, he only briefly challenged Kennedy on what should be done in Iraq, preferring questions such as, "So, is this Vietnam?" Another example is his query on whether the world's interests would be better served if a dictator such as Hussein were still in power:

Wolf Blitzer: "You voted against that original resolution way back. And you say that was the best vote in your 42 years in the United States Senate. Saddam Hussein was executed, as you know, in the last few weeks. Was the country better off, was the U.S. interests in that part of the world better off under Saddam Hussein?"

The mainstream media swooning over Illinois Senator Barack Obama continues unabated.

In yesterday's Washington Post, Dana Milbank breathlessly writes about a recent picture of Obama at the beach that appeared in that serious public policy journal People Magazine:

"We see his well-defined pecs, his perfectly hairless torso, just a bit of padding around the abs and a drawstring dangling from his form-fitting surfer trunks. The aspiring presidential candidate splashes through the water and squints into the distance; he is transformed into Burt Lancaster in 'From Here to Eternity.'"

Equally excited about Barack's body is Chicago Sun-Times political columnist Lynn Sweet. In yesterday's column she wrote:

"Obama's physique is old news to Chicago Sun-Times readers. I've worked out several times next to Obama at the East Bank Club, but alas, could not follow him into the locker room."

We feel her pain at not being able, alas, to follow him into the locker room.

What is it with the mainstream media's disproportionate interest in the way their liberal heroes look? Last October Washington Post staff writer Shailagh Murray reported:

"By a combination of luck and design, Democrats seem to be fielding an uncommonly high number of uncommonly good-looking candidates."

Now we read of Obama's well-defined pecs as though they're of national significance.

Assume for a second that a high-ranking Republican member of Congress published an article at a popular conservative website like National Review Online, Rush Limbaugh.com, or even NewsBusters asking readers for their opinions on the major issues of the day. Think this would generate some outrage from the liberal media?

Well, Tuesday morning, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Illinois), the new Majority Whip, posted a message at the ultraliberal Daily Kos (hat tip to Larwyn) asking readers, “Help me set the Senate's agenda”:

Today, a new Democratic Congress is working to make America's hopes for a better tomorrow a reality. Here in the Senate, much like Speaker Pelosi's 100-hour plan in the House, our Democratic caucus has already unveiled an ambitious agenda to provide a new direction for America.  But there is a lot of work to be done -- so today I'm asking for your input.

Durbin’s appeal continued:

It is surprising that this slipped under the radar, but during the Sunday inaugural of Sean Hannity’s new program on Fox News "Hannity's America," the host declared actor Sean Penn an “Enemy of the State” for his vitriolic remarks about the President and others in the Administration (video available here). NewsBusters has reported and chronicled many of Penn's absurd statements here, here, here, and here.

A full transcript of this marvelous segment in which Hannity takes one of Hollywood's most outspoken liberals to task follows:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger seems to be campaigning to be the liberal media’s favorite Republican office-holder. On Tuesday, ABC’s Good Morning America and NBC’s Today publicized his "bold" new plan to offer billions in new state government subsidies to provide "universal" health coverage, even to millions of illegal immigrants. ABC co-host Robin Roberts openly endorsed it: "there is definitely a crisis, and it's good to see at least trying something, something, especially to help those that are uninsured." While ABC seemed to offer no opposition, except to frame it briefly as a potential "budget buster," NBC at least noted critics in small business and opponents of subsidizing (and attracting) illegal immigrants.

MRC’s Justin McCarthy reported that ABC promoted the California health plan as a challenge to President Bush and the new Democratic Congress to follow up and do something similar nationwide:

In an article Wednesday about organized labor's legislative goals for the 110th Congress, USA Today's Sue Kirchoff mischaracterizes a law that would move the union organizing process away from secret-ballot elections, and makes it sound like an improvement in representative government (bold is mine):

The AFL-CIO ..... is looking ahead to a second bill that sponsors call the "Employee Free Choice Act."

The bill would make it easier for unions to gain representation through an open process in which workers sign cards, in addition to secret ballot elections. Currently, the National Labor Relations Board oversees a secret ballot after a union or employer meets requirements to seek one. An employer can also recognize a union if a majority of workers sign authorizing cards.

On Tuesday's Countdown, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann branded White House press secretary Tony Snow "Worst Person in the World," accusing him of "bald-faced lying" about President Bush's so-called "Mission Accomplished" speech about which so much of the media has obsessed. During the January 9 White House Press Briefing, Snow responded to a question in which he took exception to this media obsession over the President's May 1, 2003 speech on the USS Abraham Lincoln declaring an "end to major combat operations" in Iraq. While Snow slightly mis-stated the back story of how the "Mission Accomplished" sign was placed on the ship, Olbermann ignored Snow's overall point that even during that speech, the President had acknowledged that more work lay ahead to stabilize Iraq, and himself deceptively tried to prove that Snow was a "liar." (Transcript follows)

Actor Alec Baldwin -- since he woke up one morning believing that he understood politics and had an opinion that American’s would be interested in hearing -- has said and written a lot of absurd things. His recent rant at HuffnPuff has to rank high on his growing list of most inane.

Please take a seat, and secure all fluids. You’ve been warned (emphasis mine throughout):

All around us are signs of global climate change. And this administration's response is to send in more troops. If you don't think there is a link between the weather and Iraq, you are wrong.

Checking that link about now? Don’t believe me? Well, The Shadow was just getting warmed up:

It is always amazing when a "news report" is merely just a rehash of some press release, or is, at the very least, a completely one sided report.

Such is the case with a recent UPI "report", "Fight anti-Arab bigotry, Gonzalez told".

UPI is wagging its finger at U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez via a group of "Arab leaders" who are warning the government "to fight anti-Arab bigotry." The whole UPI "report" is nothing but the warnings of these so-called leaders about how filled with bigotry the USA is and how the government must fight it.

With all this hooplah, one would imagine that Arabs are being attacked, mistreated and discriminated against all across the country at an alarming rate. Arab "leader" James Zogby even makes the claim that the government must "reverse this disturbing and increasingly accepted trend of anti-Arab and Muslim bias".

Where has Maxine Waters been? It wasn't until she turned up on Tucker Carlson's show this afternoon that I realized how long it's been. Now there is one fun lady. The Representative from California proved the perfect foil, helping Carlson score some wicked points at Nancy Pelosi's expense.

Carlson's fundamental question, and I think it's a good one, is, given that Dems ran and were elected on an anti-war platform, why are they apparently about to go along with the surge? The unstated answer is that they've made a cynical political calculation that it's in their interest to demagogue the issue rather than lead.

Here's how it went down:

Waters: "I certainly, do not trust the President of the United States to lay out a case that is believable . . . I don't trust him. I don't believe him, I won't be supporting it, for sure."

Carlson: "But [Pelosi's] naive enough to believe him. I think I understand the point you're making."

Anyone remembering the ascent of Newt Gingrich to House Speaker in 1995 surely noticed a difference between media coverage of that historic event and Nancy Pelosi taking the gavel back for the Democrats in 2007. One had all the joy of a child’s funeral. The other was New Year’s Rockin’ Eve.

CNN even had a countdown clock to the Democrats regaining the majority. All that was missing was a lighted crystal donkey that would descend down a pole on the top of the Capitol dome. CNN’s Dana Bash called Pelosi’s gavel grab a "moment to savor," surely true for her supporters, but the bitterest of pills to swallow for those who worked their hearts out last year to keep Pelosi and her liberal army from retaking the House. CNN left no doubt where it stood on this divide.

The liberal media despised Newt, and adore Nancy. They’ve demonstrated this by the way they played up the Gingrich threat in the weeks after the ’94 GOP tsunami, while virtually ignoring Pelosi and her radical agenda for the last two months.

CBS "60 Minutes" correspondent Morley Safer interviewed Oscar-favored actress Helen Mirren for Sunday, and CBS sent out press materials highlighting her fondness for nude scenes. She even suggested she and Safer do their interview naked. At his routinely liberal blog for Broadcasting & Cable magazine, reporter John Eggerton applauded the silly idea as "a stroke of genius" in flouting those dictators downtown at the FCC:

For one brief shining moment I was ready to celebrate one of the gutsiest programming moves in recent years, one calculated to suggest the ludicrousness of a fixation on nudity. With CBS fighting the FCC's indecency crackdown, what a stroke of genius to have both Safer and Mirren in the nude for their interview about how Mirren, and her mother, think her past nude scenes (Caligula, Calendar Girls) are no big deal...

Open for discussion...

Christopher Hedges, the former NY Times reporter infamously booed off a college commencement stage in the middle of an anti-war rant in May 2003 , has a new book out with the hauntingly ambivalent title, "American Fascists -- The Christian Right and the War on America."

Contributor Rick Perlstein reviews it in the Times' Sunday book section and finds it unconvincing (although Perlstein seems to share some of Hedges' paranoia regarding conservative Christians):

"Hedges was a longtime foreign correspondent, for The New York Times and other publications. But he writes on this subject as a neophyte, and pads out his dispatches with ungrounded theorizing, unconvincing speculation and examples that fall far short of bearing out his thesis."

That's as far as the review goes about Hedges' 15-year-history at the Times.

Responding to a handful of liberal complainers, Monday’s NBC Nightly News basically repudiated a Friday evening story in which a NOAA meteorologist blamed the recent warmer-than-normal weather in the Northeast on an El Nino, an area of warmer than normal water in the Pacific Ocean that forms every five years or so.

After some mean-spirited comments on NBC’s “Daily Nightly” blog site, where writers attacked anchor Brian Williams as a tool of big business for not taking the opportunity to blame global warming, Nightly News flip-flopped. Monday’s newscast showcased a brand new expert, and he argued the El Nino cycle was being exacerbated “by humans using the atmosphere as a free place to dump our tailpipe wastes.” Reporter Robert Bazell suggested that “even the heavy snow in the Rockies this year might be partly caused by global warming.”

In case you haven't seen it, over on The Corner, Jonah Goldberg shared correspondence on the AP's Jamil Hussein problem from Michael Schrage, a former reporter for the Washington Post and columnist for the Los Angeles Times unleashing on the "mainstream" media:

Subject: You are, indeed, missing something -

I wrote this piece for the washington post a year ago. It speaks for itself...but the jamail hussein saga is a classic example of unprofessional, plame-like hypocrisy by the AP...

They named their source - many, many times - and it was challenged...there
was a myriad of ways they could have handled the query: they could have
called in a favor and gotten one of the AP-member newspapers in iraq to
'interview' the guy to vouch; they could have done a podcast with the guy;
if the bloggers still insisted the guy was a fraud, then AP itself would be
literally accused of not just perpetrating a hoax but perpetuating one...

At ABC's "World Newser" blog, Chuck Lustig, ABC's Director of Foreign News, laments big-money college athletics, represented by Nick Saban's reported eight-year, $32 million contract to coach college football at Alabama. Perhaps he can carry around a protest sign reading "Books Not (Long) Bombs." Expect another blog to follow from an ABC feminist complaining that Alabama's coaches for women's sports are being cheated of larger salaries, a sure Title IX violation. Lustig lamented:

Then I started to think about the $40 million Oprah Winfrey spent to build a school in South Africa and asked the question is there something wrong with our educational priorities in this country that a college coach can make so much money at a time when many of our country's school districts are wrangling with huge deficits?

In her story today on the resumption of the debate on embryonic stem cell research (ESCR) in the House, Laurie Kellman of the Associated Press reports the following as fact:

Polls show Americans overwhelmingly support federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. And scientists aren't sure that stem cells shed by a fetus and extracted from the surrounding fluid carry the same possibility for treatments and cures of diseases as those culled from embryos.

The facts are that:

• At least one poll involved asked a misleading question to get a still-not-"overwhelming" result that does not support the characterization of "overwhelming support" she employs.
• The poll's sample was skewed to Democrats and strong Democrats.
• The "possibility for treatments" for stem cells obtained from amniotic fluid may have MORE disease-eliminating possibilities than those obtained from ESCR will ever have.

First, the poll (overview article; PDF from Ipsos):

Fox News’s Geraldo Rivera was recently being interviewed on a radio station in Florida, and, according to an article at the Orlando Sentinel’s blog on Monday, he harbors some ill feelings towards MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann.

This goes back to Rivera being kicked out of Iraq for divulging too much information about American troop movements. For whatever reason, Rivera feels that Olbermann was responsible for the media hype surrounding this incident (Update with video of KO's response follows):

Apparently Geraldo was visiting with 104.1 FM's Monsters just before Christmas, when they asked him about the time he made international headline [sic] for disclosing too much information about troops in Iraq. Geraldo claimed the incident was blown out of proportion, largely by NBC -- and specifically Olbermann. Geraldo then began mumbling semi-audible names, seemingly meant to describe Olbermann: "midget ... punk ... slimeball."

That wasn’t all Rivera had to say about KO:

Is there no bridge too far for Joe Scarborough to cross in defending charges of liberal bias against his NBC/MSNBC employers? On last night's Scarborough Country, Joe adopted a position so sycophantish, even Keith Olbermann might have been embarrassed by it.

Scarborough suggested that NBC News had done the right thing in assembling a panel on the Iraq surge composed exclusively of experts hostile to the President Bush's proposal. Scarborough's suggestion came in the course of a segment on Bill O'Reilly's revealing interview with Andrea Mitchell last week, during which he confronted her on NBC's liberal bias. Video: Real (4.3MB) or Windows (5MB) Plus MP3 (795 KB)

Virtually every time the ultra-liberal Rosie O’Donnell makes an offensive and/or politically insensitive remark on “The View,” right-thinking Americans across the fruited plain question how long host Barbara Walters and/or ABC executives are going to tolerate her extraordinary behavior. If a New York Post “Page Six” column Tuesday is accurate, the answer might be “Not much longer”:

THE tension between "The View" creator Barbara Walters and co-host Rosie O'Donnell, sparked by O'Donnell's feud with Donald Trump, boiled over yesterday morning when the portly comic called Walters "a [bleeping] liar."

The fight started around 8:30 a.m. when Walters, back from a two-week vacation, walked into the hair and makeup room at ABC studios and tried to hug O'Donnell, whom she hired onto the popular show.

The article detailed the melee (Update: Trump has sent a letter to Rosie about this article, hat tip to Hot Air):

It was the worst of times, it was the best of times on this morning's "Today." Throughout the show's long opening segment on Iraq, and regardless of the visuals: from David Gregory to President Bush, troops on the ground, Nancy Pelosi, Gordon Smith, etc., the screen graphic continued to skeptically ask "Lost Cause?"

So when Meredith Vieira began her subsequent interview of Ted Kennedy, there was every reason to expect her to lob softballs to the senator on the legislation he's introducing requiring Pres. Bush to obtain specific congressional authorization of a surge.

Surprisingly, that was not the case.

View an edited video clip of the interview here.

The blog "Couric & Co." at CBSNews.com has transformed from mostly Katie to mostly other CBS personnel in the last few weeks. On Monday, Couric writer (and former CNN anchor) Mary Alice Williams recounted how the ascent of Nancy Pelosi was a "very big deal" and went a little overboard about how much better women were:

The picture alone demonstrated what a difference her leadership will make. Instead of a lone male gaveling Congress into session, here was a female surrounded by children. Women, in ways far different from men, represent families.

Williams wrote that her 16-year-old daughter Alice was there to witness history, courtesy of her congressman (no name or party affiliation attached). She also made it seem likely that she's the one who wrote for Couric that it's taken too long: "In helping women gain true equality in every aspect of life, Susan B. Anthony always said 'failure is impossible.' Today the only quibble she might have is that it took so long."

On Monday's CBS Evening News, White House reporter Jim Axelrod adopted Democratic terminology as he referred to President Bush's plan to call “for an escalation in the number of U.S. troops in Iraq.” Axelrod later applied the more Bush-friendly term of “surge,” but he also presumed the election was all about Iraq and not congressional Republican malfeasance in the Foley matter: “He'll be going against what voters said they wanted last November, and what the new Democratic leaders in Congress say they want right now.”

Axelrod soon highlighted how “a new CBS News poll out tonight indicates nearly six in ten Americans either want troop levels lowered or a full withdrawal." An on-screen graphic pegged the numbers at 59 percent wanting troops in Iraq “decreased or removed” and 35 percent wishing them “increased or the same.” But in citing only that one poll finding which combined answers, Axelrod skipped how the public is nearly evenly split on a “short term troop increase to stabilize Iraq,” with 45 percent in favor and 48 percent opposed. Furthermore, the PDF of the poll results reported that “those with friends and relatives who have served in Iraq are a bit more supportive of the idea than Americans overall” with 50 percent in favor and 44 percent opposed.

As we noted here, when Andrea Mitchell appeared on The Factor last week, Bill O'Reilly confronted her over NBC's leftward tilt. Andrea not only denied any NBC bias, she also vouched for CBS' and ABC's fairness. For good measure, Mitchell claimed that Chris Matthews is no liberal.

Tucker Carlson fired back on his MSNBC show this afternoon. The gist of his argument: that in attacking Keith Olbermann, O'Reilly was actually promoting the Countdown's lefty host. There was only one problem with Carlson's theory: O'Reilly never mentioned Olbermann. Not once. I watched the Factor segment live, wrote about it, posted a video excerpt and - just for good measure - have gone back and checked the closed-caption transcript and can confirm that not only did O'Reilly not mention Olbermann, he never so much as alluded to him or his show.

The Sunday debut of "Hannity’s America" on the Fox News Channel featured Elisabeth Hasselbeck, the only non-liberal co-host on ABC's "The View." During the interview, Hannity and Hasselbeck discussed some controversies involving her colleague Rosie O’Donnell. Through the discussion about the war of words between Donald Trump and Rosie, Hasselbeck mildly defended her co-host and even asserted that despite political differences, Rosie is her "friend."

However, when Sean Hannity inevitably came to Rosie’s controversial statement "radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam," Hasselbeck did not come close to defending her "friend." Hasselbeck even called O’Donnell’s comments "absurd." The entire transcript is below.

Perhaps the strident liberalism of Rosie O’Donnell and Joy Behar is emboldening Barbara Walters? On the Monday edition of "The View," the ABC journalist insisted that America went to war with Iraq without knowing the facts. Walters made her assertion follwing comments from the liberal O’Donnell, who touted the fact that she wore a "No War" t-shirt prior to the 2003 invasion, and co-host Behar’s claim that "they [the Bush administration] lied to us!" The veteran correspondent responded to these statements by sounding like more of an activist and less of a journalist:

Barbara Walters: "We didn't have the facts at that time."

Joy Behar: "That's right."

Walters: "We did not have the facts. And it is true that we have not seen– We have– We- The most brutal pictures we saw were the pictures of Saddam Hussein being hanged. We have not seen some of, some of the terribleness that have happened to our men and women. And I do think, and if you look at the polls, that the tide is turning. What the answer is, nobody seems to know."

Eleanor Clift of Newsweek asserted on this past weekend’s McLaughlin Group that John Negroponte was moving from the role of Director of National Intelligence to become the number two man at the State Department because Vice President Cheney and President Bush wanted a yes man in the intelligence position who would "support their desire to make war with Iran." Clift also portrayed Vice President Cheney as a bully on intelligence matters as she claimed that had Negroponte remained the Director of National Intelligence, "he’d spend the next two years agreeing with Dick Cheney that we have to wage war with Iran, or he’d be pushing back unsuccessfully."

Yet in her indictment of the President and Vice President over wanting war with Iran, Clift neither condemned any of Iran’s provocative actions, nor did she mention paths the Bush administration is pursuing to avoid war, such as working through the U.N. Security Council to impose sanctions.

In a story about politically indexed mutual funds the Gray Lady notes:

Two funds started recently by Blue Investment Management, a New York fund company that is less than a year old, will limit their holdings to companies that donate the majority of their political contributions to Democrats...

What isn't mentioned is that one of the companies that the Blue Fund finds slanted far enough to the Democratic side of the aisle to invest in is...the New York Times Company (CBS, too).

Via The Jawa Report.