North America

Just deserts were dished out to one Saddam Hussein last night. Few deserved it more than he.

There is no reason for me to recount his many crimes against humanity here, but it is a good thing he has paid for his evil -- and paid with his life.

That is all that needs to be said about that...

But, in reading the AP's story by Abdul-Zahra, something else comes to the fore that is vexing to anyone looking for truth in the media. Of course, truth is always in short supply from our friends at al-AP, but with Abdul-Zahra's report we see a constant misuse of the English language.

As the AP reports (Strip-Searched Muslim Woman Gets Apology), the Dept. of Homeland Security sent an apology letter to a Muslim woman who was strip searched on April 11th, 2006. Naturally, the AP uses the report as an excuse to bash the US government.

The Department of Homeland Security has sent a letter apologizing to a Muslim woman who was detained at the Tampa airport and strip-searched at a county jail.

Safana Jawad, 45, a Spanish citizen who was born in Iraq, was detained on April 11 because of a suspected tie to a suspicious person, authorities said. She was held for two days before being deported to England.

It amazes me that this Kwanzaa business has been washed of the real life criminal activity of its creator. The man was a race monger, a violent thug, a rapist, a torturer... just a horrible human being.

Yet never a word of this man's evil is ever uttered when his pseudo holiday is discussed in the MSM.

And the Cox News Service did it again on Christmas in theirs titled Kwanzaa glows even brighter after 40 years.

Kwanzaa turns 40 today. The colorful holiday, invented by California professor Maulana Ron Karenga in 1966, is like a jazz musician who fuses bits and pieces of music into a vibrant mosaic of sound. Kwanzaa, "first fruit" in Swahili, is a fluent, nonreligious holiday that borrows liberally from a patchwork of cultures and traditions.

Karenga originally created the seven-day observance to empower black communities and uplift black culture and identity.

Proving that Time Magazine never understood a single thing about John McCain, Time writer, Karen Tumulty, is all worried about the "cost" of McCain's purported run for the 2008 GOP nomination for the presidency.

The head and sub-head lines alone are so filled with misconstructions, assumptions and laments that one doesn't have to read the rest of the story to know how far off they are in analysis.

Why It's Dangerous For the Maverick To Be the...Front Runner

John McCain was a straight-talking upstart in the 2000 presidential election. Now he's poised to be the G.O.P. favorite for 2008, but at what cost?

First of all, the "maverick" label is one the press created and drove McCain ever more toward with their fawning attention. This assumption of "front runner" now is also a figment of their imagination.

Then, they belie their supposed objectivity and reveal how much they loved the claimed maverick status of their hero, McCain, by claiming there now is a "cost" to be incurred with his attempt to get the '08 nomination. Tumulty's article reveals her bad feelings that he will have to try harder this time to court the base as opposed to imagining that the independent and moderate vote will catapult him past all comers in a GOP primary -- a woefully mistaken belief from the 2000 run that the press seems to have encouraged for McCain, an encouragement that doomed his candidacy.

It has been interesting, to say the least, to watch the MSM twist itself into knots trying to report this story of Pelosi backing the extremist Murtha for Party leadership over the objections of the so-called "blue dog" Democrats who were recently elected to Congress.

Pelosi has decided to ardently back the extreme anti-war activist, John Murtha (Dem, PA), for the Democrat's Majority leader position in a move that has 'baffled" many Democrats, especially those incoming Democrats who ran as conservative alternatives to Republicans -- as well as other incumbent moderate Democrats -- who are instead backing Maryland Democrat Steny Hoyer.

Hoyer is well known on the floor not to be quite as extreme as Murtha is on a pull out from Iraq (Hoyer voted to give Bush the OK to go into Iraq in 2002, but he IS for gradual withdraw to be sure), but few Americans will have even heard of Steny Hoyer, he not being much of a "national" figure. On the other hand, anyone who had paid politics much attention knows that Murtha is against the war and is a vocal critic of President Bush. Murtha is well known for his many extreme positions and statements.

NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell is appearing on FNC's "Hannity & Colmes" to discuss Ted Turner's comments on North Korea and how he thinks it's difficult to choose sides in the war on terror. Tune in now (or 2am Eastern) and watch. Post your comments here.

Bozell appeared with former ABC News reporter Bob Zelnick, now with Boston University. Sean Hannity set up the segment by playing a clip of Turner at the National Press Club on Monday:

“He said, 'either you're with us or you're against us.' And I had a problem with that because I really hadn't made my mind up yet. You know, what if you haven't made your mind up? What if you're thinking about it, doing some studying, doing some reading? Because it's an important decision to go to war, whether to go to war or not to go to war. I mean, you're either with us or against us -- that's pretty black and white.”

Video clip (5:10): Real (3.9 MB at 100 kbps) or Windows Media (3.3 MB at 81 kbps), plus MP3 audio (1.8 MB)

When it comes to toadying up to the Castro regime, it's going to be tough for the Associated Press to top its achievement noted by Clay Waters - Some Cubans Enjoy Comforts of Communism.

Even so, the AP - in the person of writer Andrew Selsky - put in a more-than-respectable effort today with the article No Photos of Castro Since His Surgery.

Here's the key line:

"Most Cubans have insisted that they are sure Castro will recover and that the government will function fine until then. But others have privately expressed worries that their leader may be more sick than the world knows."

What is it about the liberal media that regularly confuses mass protests with public opinion? In Mexico, the vote has been certified, and conservative Felipe Calderon is the president-elect. But yesterday, leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador held a massive protest in Mexico City insisting he's the winner. The top of The Washington Post's front page Sunday carries a large photo of  "Tens of thousands" of AMLO supporters, under the headline "Contender Alleges Mexico's Vote Was Rigged." Reporter Manuel Roig-Franzia began the story as if he was waving a leftist flag in the square:

Downtown Mexico City swelled Saturday with the accumulated frustration and rage of the poor, who were stoked into a sign-waving, fist-pumping frenzy by new fraud allegations that failed populist candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador hopes will overturn the results of Mexico's presidential election.

The top of Tuesday's Washington Post carries the headline "Mexico Girds for Legal Battle As Election Yields a Near Tie." But the caption nearby under pictures of the candidates reports: "Felipe Calderon, left, has 36.38 percent of the vote following a preliminary, uncertified tally, and Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has 35.34 percent." That's a one percent lead, which is tight, but not a "near tie" -- it's a margin of 384,000 votes, says the New York Times with a more accurate headline: "Conservative Has Slight Edge in Mexico Vote." The Post story never employed a numerical vote margin in its story, hiding the margin of hundreds of thousands of votes.