CNN daytime anchor Don Lemon appeared on CNN’s Reliable Sources on Sunday to come strongly to the defense of Michael Jackson, whom he saluted twice as an "accidental civil rights leader." Lemon charged that anyone who thinks the Jackson story is overdone is "elitist," and when Kurtz suggested the "civil rights leader" might have been a child molester, Lemon quickly asserted that it was never proven in court and "if you talk to people who were involved in those cases, they don't believe that he did it."

Kurtz invited in Lemon, former Washington Post and New York Times entertainment reporter Sharon Waxman, and Baltimore Sun TV critic David Zurawik. All three thought the Jackson story was not overcovered. (Kurtz claimed on Twitter it was "hard to find a critic" of the overkill on the holiday weekend.)

Lemon suggested there wasn’t much criticism of the overcoverage of Princess Diana’s death (what country was he living in back then?), implying maybe because she was white:

HOWARD KURTZ: Don't you feel deep down that this is overdoing it?

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell apparently can't do a television interview anymore without going after conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh.

Unfortunately, Sunday wasn't any different.

Appearing with John King on CNN's "State of the Union," Powell couldn't resist referring to Limbaugh in a question about Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor (video embedded below the fold with partial transcript):

In announcing that she was stepping down as Alaska Governor on Friday, Sarah Palin noted the unrelenting hostility of liberal media elites. In the barely ten months since she burst onto the national scene, Palin has been scorned and mocked by journalists -- including many supposedly objective reporters -- like few other politicians. Here are a few of the choicer attacks, as compiled from MRC's Notable Quotables newsletter:

"She is a far-right conservative who supported Pat Buchanan over George W. Bush in 2000. She thinks global warming is a hoax and backs the teaching of creationism in public schools. Women are not likely to be impressed by her opposition to abortion even in the case of rape and incest."
— Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter in a "Web exclusive" posted on his magazine’s Web site, August 29, 2008.

"[McCain has] done it [picked Sarah Palin] at great cost, because the whole Republican convention...was going to be the slogan, ‘He’s not ready to lead,’ meaning Barack Obama. Well, Sarah Palin makes Barack Obama look like John Adams. I mean, it’s just, it’s no contest."
— Newsweek’s Howard Fineman on MSNBC’s Countdown, August 29.

Newsweek’s Eleanor Clift: "This [McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin] is not a serious choice. It makes it look like a made for TV movie. If the media reaction is anything, it’s been literally laughter in many places across news-"
Host John McLaughlin: "Where is that? See that?"
Clift: "In very, very many newsrooms."
— Exchange on The McLaughlin Group, August 31, 2008.

In today's Sarah Palin Derangement segment, CNN's Rick Sanchez actually asked Candy Crowley if the Alaska Governor is stepping down because she's pregnant again (h/t multiple NB readers):

Doesn't the title of this story from CNNMoney.Com make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside? "White House Staff Safe From Obama Tax Hike." I bet you were biting your fingernails in worry about whether White House staffers would be hit with the higher taxes that President Obama promised would only happen to those making over $250,000 per year. Here is the "reassurance" from CNNMoney that the White House staffers won't be burdened by higher taxes due to Obama's sacred pledge:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Barack Obama's White House staff appears to be safe from a tax increase, for now.

The White House on Wednesday issued its annual report to Congress listing the salaries of all staff, revealing that everyone gets paid less than $200,000.

During the election campaign, Obama promised no income tax increase for anyone making under $250,000.

[Update, 3 pm Eastern: Video and audio clips added.]

CNN glowingly featured an entire segment on Thursday’s American Morning about Wendell Potter, a former chief corporate spokesman for the health insurance company Cigna, and he attempted to discredit conservative ad campaigns against health “reform” proposals as “outright lies.” But reporter Jim Acosta left out his current ideological employment: since May, Potter has worked as a senior fellow on health care for the Center for Media and Democracy, the brainchild of John Stauber, the co-author of  “Banana Republicans: How the Right Wing is Turning America Into a One-Party State,” and a unpaid advisor to the anti-war group Iraq Veterans Against the War [audio clip from segment available here].

Acosta’s segment, which aired at the end of the 7 am Eastern hour of the CNN program, featured four extended clips from Potter, and introduced the former Cigna spokesman as a “health insurance company insider...[who] has stepped forward to warn the public about the industry’s practices, and some of those ads shaping the debate.” After a short introduction of his subject, Acosta began by playing the first clip of Potter from a recent Senate hearing, where Democratic Senator Jay Rockefeller compared him to Russell Crowe’s character in the tobacco-industry-expose movie “The Insider.”

During an interview of Brookings Institution senior fellow Kevin Casas-Zamora on Wednesday’s American Morning, CNN anchor John Roberts not only failed to mention the liberal political leanings of the fellow’s organization, but omitted any mention of the scandal which led to Casa-Zamora’s resignation from the vice presidency of Costa Rica.

Roberts brought on Casas-Zamora to discuss the recent military coup in Honduras, which unseated President Jose Manuel Zelaya, who had been seeking a referendum to extend his term in office. He introduced him as the “senior foreign policy fellow with the Brookings Institution- also recently served as the vice president of Costa Rica.” Specifically, the fellow served from 2006 until 2007 as the country’s vice president and minister of planning and economic policy.

Juan Carlos Hidalgo of the CATO Institute’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperty wrote a column for the Miami Herald on October 5, 2007 which reported that in a leaked private memorandum written to Costa Rican President Oscar Arias, Casas-Zamora had “suggested, among other things, withholding public money to mayors who failed to deliver their districts’ votes on CAFTA [the Central American Free Trade Agreement], and circumventing some electoral rules. The ensuing scandal led to Casas’ resignation and caused a dramatic fall in CAFTA’s popularity.”

Over at TVBytheNumbers.com, we see that CNN has come in third to FoxNews and MSNBC respectively for weekday primetime ratings during the second quarter of this year. This is the first time that MSNBC has come out ahead of CNN ever.

Unfortunately for those of us wishing for a well informed public, it is the Keith Olbermann show that is driving MSNBC's ratings gain over CNN. Apparently Americans are desperately in need of comedy since last January.

[Update, 8 pm Eastern: Screen capture, video link to interview added.]

CNN anchor Kyra Phillips sympathized with an outed homosexual army officer on Tuesday’s Newsroom program. Phillips questioned Lt. Colonel Victor Fehrenbach about his recent meeting with President Obama, and asked, “What else did you tell him, because I know this has weighed heavily on your heart for a very long time....What did he tell you that gives you...hope...that he is going to get rid of this?” [video of interview available here]

The anchor’s interview with Fehrenbach occurred a day after he attended a “celebrating LGBT Pride Month” event at the White House. He was the guest of the homosexual activist group the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, which presses for the repeal of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy (as Rachel Maddow announced on her MSNBC show a week earlier), and is promoting a petition on the lieutenant colonel’s behalf. After noting the officer’s career and “nine medals for bravery as a combat pilot,” Phillips began with an enthusiastic question: “So there you were- every chance to say everything you ever wanted...to the president about the situation that you are fighting for, which is your job, and to get rid of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’ How did you make your way to the president for a one-on-one?”

On Monday’s Newsroom program, CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin couldn’t find a consistent argument about the Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of New Haven firefighters who accused their city of reverse discrimination. Toobin first reported that Justice Kennedy, “the swing vote in this case, as in so many others,” wrote the decision, but minutes later, he labeled it as a ruling by “the five conservatives on the Court.”

When news of the Court’s decision broke early in the 10 am Eastern hour of the CNN program, anchor Heidi Collins brought on Toobin, the network’s senior legal analyst, to comment on the five to four ruling. He began with a summary: “The Supreme Court- five to four- in a decision by Justice Anthony Kennedy, who is the swing vote in this case, as in so many others, ruled that the New Haven firefighters were the victims of reverse discrimination.”

Apart from several reports on FNC, and a few on CNN, the mainstream television news media have ignored the controversial firing of former Inspector General Gerald Walpin, who had recently battled for tougher penalties against Obama friend and Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson after an investigation by Walpin found Johnson had misused hundreds of thousands of tax dollars granted by the AmeriCorps program to the Johnson-founded St. Hope charity. Over the past weeks, there have been a number of developments, including the opening of an FBI investigation into the St. Hope charity, further casting doubt on the White House's decisions and bolstering Walpin's case that he was wrongfully booted.

In the June 22 editorial "Walpin-gate Opens Wider; FBI Investigation Embarrasses the White House," the Washington Times wrote that "The FBI has opened an investigation into a Sacramento program formerly run by a close ally of President Obama's, giving credence to the IG's work."

As NewsBusters' Tim Graham reported, the Obama administration planted Huffington Post blogger Nico Pitney to ask a question at Tuesday's press conference.

The following day, the Washington Post's Dana Milbank also took the White House to task for this shameful episode. 

On Sunday's "Reliable Sources," Milbank and Pitney had a rather heated debate about what transpired that included, according to Pitney, the WaPoer calling him a "d**k" (video embedded below the fold with transcript):

CNN’s Ali Velshi, during a segment on Thursday’s Newsroom program, ignored all the past sex scandals involving Democrats in recent years as he focused on “another sex scandal involving a leading Republican.” When his guest, Tony Blankley, tried to counter with how these scandals are being used to try to get the GOP to abandon social issues, Velshi tried hard to brush this aside.

The segment with Blankley, which aired at the end of the 3 pm Eastern hour of the CNN program, began with Velshi recapping the details about the most recent Republican sex scandal involving South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, and how legislators in the state were proceeding with possible impeachment of the executive. He then introduced his main point for the segment: “Okay, I’m going to say it- another sex scandal involving a leading Republican- this is the second in two weeks. It’s hardly helping the party to resurrect its image.”

After introducing his guest, Velshi referred to his point and asked, “I wasn’t the first guy to say that. You’ve heard this a lot in the last few days. You heard it before Mark Sanford. What’s going on with the Republicans and scandals?” Blankley first rebuked Sanford and any Republican who had been caught in marital infidelity. He continued by making his point about the push to give up on family values: “As far as the party is concerned, although there’s hypocrisy when one of its members or two or seven of its members breach the standards it advocates, you can’t give up your values. The party believes in supporting families. You have programs that do that.”

On Tuesday’s Newsroom program, CNN correspondent Carol Costello harkened back to the 1970 incident at Kent State University, where National Guardsmen shot rock-throwing protesters and bystanders, and made it a possible equivalent to the recent murder of Iranian student Neda. Costello pondered the effect of the Neda murder video on the Iranian protests, and flashed a famous photo from the 1970 shootings [audio clips from the report are available here].

Anchor Kyra Phillips introduced the overall theme of Costello’s report: “By now, you’ve probably heard about Neda, the young Iranian woman that was gunned down in Tehran. Well, in death, she’s become quite a symbol of countless Iranians demanding new elections. The question now: will the memory of Neda help make that happen?” After giving some details into the college student’s death, the correspondent described the international reaction to it: “It seems the whole world now knows Neda and aches for her- and why not? It watched her die.”

Costello subsequently played a clip of Iranian author Azar Nafisi’s reaction to the Neda death video. She then proposed her question about the impact of the video: “It’s difficult to say right now, though, if this image of Neda will change everything. We know that pictures sometimes do. Many believe this shot taken at Kent State of a student gunned down after a Vietnam War protest helped end the war, yet this video of a lone student standing up to Chinese tanks did not end communism in China.”

CNN anchor Campbell Brown used a proponent’s own talking point about President Obama’s planned health care socialization as she pressed a doctor over his skepticism of the project during her program on Monday: “There’s plenty of evidence...that...two-thirds of all bankruptcies in this country [are] due to people’s medical bills. It’s clear the current system isn’t working, so why not be open to trying this?”

Brown hosted Dr. Jorge Rodriguez, a supporter of the president’s plan, and Dr. Eric Novack, a senior fellow for the conservative Americans for Prosperity, for her regular “Great Debate” segment. After an opening statement from the two doctors on the health care issue, the anchor asked Dr. Rodriguez, “What do you say to critics who charge what we’re talking about, what we’re debating is really socialized medicine- that people envision hours of waiting to get into- you know, to get to see a doctor, the rationing of our health care?”

Should there be a background check for national reporters?  

One wonders.  On June 21, CNN’s Anderson Cooper aired a special report for CBS’ “60 Minutes.”  In this report, Cooper repeated the tired, discredited, blatantly incorrect idea that 90% of Mexican drug cartels’ arms supply comes from the United States.  In addition, Cooper showed some interesting B-roll footage of seized weapon, some of which clearly cannot be bought on the civilian market.

Initially, one might note the M16A1, M16A2, M4, and what appears to be a standard NATO-issue M60.

Contrary to the claims of many liberals, at least some of Iran's anti-government protesters are anxious for Barack Obama to lend American support to their cause. An Iranian student interviewed on CNN’s American Morning on Monday pleaded for the world, and President Obama by name, to become more active in assisting the protests against the Islamic regime in Tehran: “International community....especially, I ask President Barack Obama directly...this government is a huge threat to global peace....We need your help international community. Don’t leave us alone.” [Audio from the segment available here.]

Near the end of the interview, anchor John Roberts asked the student, who went by the first name of Mohammed alone, for the specific demands of the protesters: “Are the students seeking regime change? Are they looking to bring down the Ayatollah and completely change the form of government there in Iran, or are you looking for- as has been suggested- more civil rights, more freedoms, within the context of the existing regime?”

Without any sort of prompting, Mohammed first addressed some of the major controversies involving the Iranian regime: “For about three decades, our nation has been humiliated and insulted by this regime....We are peaceful nation. We don’t hate anybody. We want to be an active member of international community. We don’t want to be isolated....We don’t deny Holocaust. We...do accept Israel’s rights. And actually...we want severe reform on this structure. This structure is not going to be tolerated by the majority of Iranians. We need severe reform, as much as possible.”

Good Morning America's Diane Sawyer popped up on Sunday's Reliable Sources and swore that ABC's much-scrutinized health care special with President Obama "won't be an infomercial." She also seriously touted the objectivity of the network, cheering, "I know that our network has worked very, very hard to be completely- completely responsible and fair and serious about big issues." [Audio available here]

After host Howard Kurtz played a clip of FNC's Sean Hannity attacking the June 24 special as an infomercial, Sawyer, who will be co-hosting the program with Charlie Gibson from inside the White House, promised, "We will be there, and these people in this room are going to be able to ask questions from every single vantage point. And they are going to challenge the President, many of them."

When asked whether ABC should include guests from the health care industry, Sawyer, who appeared via phone, said such voices would be featured and again swore, "And I think a lot of people haven't understand fully that this is going to be a room full of widely diverse ideas in which people who actually experience the reality of front-line health care are going to get a chance to pose their challenging questions to the President." However, Kurtz didn't quiz the host as to why the ABC network has refused to air ads from the health care industry during the special. And when Sawyer noted that ABC "has done town hall forums before," he didn't point out that many of them have been severely slanted.

It's a supposedly objective news outlet, yet ABC News is cozying up with the White House for a health care special to assist President Barack Obama in selling his plan. But according to ABC's "Good Morning America" co-host Diane Sawyer, there's nothing wrong with it. In fact, she's proud of ABC.

Sawyer appeared on CNN's June 21 "Reliable Sources" by phone in an interview with host Howard Kurtz, media columnist of The Washington Post.

"Again, ABC, I'm so proud of ABC," Sawyer said. "And I hope that there is some recognition for the fact that this network is trying to tackle a serious issue in a serious way, and we are doing something that we would love to see a lot more air time dedicated to. What is more important than a dialogue about health care? It is not an infomercial. ABC News does not do that. We will be there, and these people in this room are going to be able to ask questions from every single vantage point. And they are going to challenge the president, many of them."

Two reports on CNN’s Situation Room on Wednesday about President Obama’s extension of benefits to same-sex partners of federal employees and the campaign to overturn Proposition 8 in California featured only left-wing sound bites, and none from conservative opponents of homosexual activists.

The first report from correspondent Dan Lothian, which aired just after the beginning of the 4 pm Eastern hour of the CNN program, included clips from a homosexual federal employee and his “husband” who was afflicted with pancreatic cancer, as well as Joe Solmonese of the liberal Human Rights Campaign. Over an hour later, Jessica Yellin’s report on Proposition 8 opponents’ efforts to overturn the ballot initiative which made same-sex “marriage” illegal again, featured two leaders from California “progressive” organizations, the Courage Campaign, and Equality California.

A chyron which accompanied a report on CNN’s Newsroom program on Wednesday about the arrest of a leader of an organization inspired by the Minuteman Project, referred to her and her accused accomplices as “extremists.” Despite qualifying how the largest Minuteman organization had distanced itself from the suspects, anchor Rick Sanchez questioned how she became a “player in the anti-immigration movement.”

Sanchez took the human interest story approach to the segment, which began 26 minutes into the 3 pm Eastern hour of the CNN program. He first displayed the picture of a young girl who was one of two murder victims in the case, and gave the following description: “Things are not always as they seem, right? And I want to illustrate this now with a picture of a beautiful little girl- there she is. Her name is Brisenia Flores- take a close look, because it may be the only way that you’ll be able to see this little girl. Why? Because this little girl- Brisenia Flores- is now dead.”

After giving some details of the crime, the anchor continued by describing the suspects: “Shawna Ford and two other suspects are now being held on a bond of a million dollars for the deaths of Brisenia Flores and her father....Let me tell you who Shawn Forde is. She’s the executive director of a group that’s called Minuteman American Defense. Police say that Forde planned the killing of the little girl and her father to steal drugs and money, and make it look like it was the work of a drug cartel.”

[Update, 9:00 pm EDT: Audio and video clips added.]

President Obama isn't nearly liberal enough for HBO's Bill Maher. On Tuesday’s Situation Room on CNN, Maher repeated the focus of his rant on his show last Friday night about how Obama hasn't been adequately aggressive. When Wolf Blitzer asked what he was most disappointed about with President Obama, the HBO host went into full denial mode: “Barack Obama is not a socialist -- he’s not even a liberal....this country needs a left wing. It doesn’t have it, and part of the reason is the media.”

After Maher gave a bit of a criticism of the Democratic President, the CNN anchor asked: “So where are you most disappointed, because...a lot of liberals are disappointed he hasn’t done more to advance gay rights, for example- but where- where are you most disappointed in this president?” The HBO host first joked about his sexual identity, and continued by expressing his bewilderment with Obama: “I don’t know if this administration has really caught up to the idea that Americans are a lot more liberal, perhaps, than we think they are- or they think they are....I think part of the problem is that we don’t really have a progressive party in this country. We have the Democrats, who are what the Republicans used to be when I was a kid. They’re a pro-business party, a corporate-friendly, pro-business party. And then we have the Republicans, which are just a club for angry white people and Jesus freaks” [audio clips from interview available here].

Campbell Brown: No Bias, No Bull... no ratings. TVNewser at MediaBistro.com is reporting that Brown has seen a new low in her ratings. Last week she racked up... or down as the case may be... a stat of just 69,000 viewers for Friday, June 12, which was also "the lowest demo viewership for CNN at 8pmET since Christmas Day 2007."

According to TVNewser, the previous low was heaped on Roland Martin who got a dismal 115,000 viewers on May 20. Maybe Roland Martin could have used some help from Rowan and Martin? (There I go dating myself again)

Jack Cafferty seems a bit bitter.  He apparently hasn’t gotten over Al Gore losing Florida in the 2000 election.  

On today’s CNN Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer, guest analyst Rob Sobhani briefly mentioned that the democratic process in Iran would be a bit like if the American Supreme Court chose who would be allowed to run for President:

ROB SOBHANI: Well for your viewers, I think the best example is if the Supreme Court of America decided who’s going to run for office.  And that’s exactly what happened in Iran, the council of guardians decided that Mr. Mousavi, Karroubi, Rezaee, and Ahmadinejad were going to run.  So in essence, it is not democratic, but the process ends up being democratic.  And that’s the dilemma of the United States right now.

Immediately after this, Sobhani was dismissed, and Cafferty introduced.  Blitzer wondered aloud if the recent Iranian elections could possibly incite a repeat of the 1979 Iranian revolution – but Cafferty was not satisfied with that historical comparison:

When four members of the media, only one of them decidely right-leaning, agree on something, viewers should pay heed: blaming conservative talk show hosts whenever someone goes on an unprovoked shooting spree is wrong.

Such was the unanimous conclusion reached on Sunday's "Reliable Sources" when host Howard Kurtz and his guests -- Mark Halperin of Time magazine, Ana Marie Cox of Air America Radio, and Jim Geraghty of National Review -- got together to discuss the predictable reaction to Wednesday's killings at the Holocaust Museum Memorial.

Most surprisingly, even the uber-liberal Cox concurred:

I do think it is irresponsible to make that a very like hard connection. I have to totally disagree with Rachel [Maddow] and Keith [Olbermann] on this. I think that that was going a little bit too far to compare him to Rush Limbaugh.

Imagine that. What follows is an embedded video of this surprising segment (relevant section at 12:00) along with a partial transcript:

[Update, 7:40 pm EDT: Audio and video from segment added.]

Another discussion panel on CNN’s Campbell Brown program on Thursday leaned to the left, this time on the Letterman/Palin controversy. Air America’s Sam Seder defended the raunchy “joke” about one of the Palin daughters. VH-1’s Janell Snowden supported the host’s “job to make fun of people.” CNN analyst Jeff Toobin thought Bristol Palin was “fair game.” Only Republican Susan Molinari sided with the governor [audio clips from the segment available here].

Brown first turned to Molinari, the moderate former congresswoman from New York, for her take on the issue. She condemned Letterman’s “mean joke,” though she did buy the CBS host’s explanation that it was about 18-year-old Bristol Palin, and not 14-year-old Willow Palin. Molinari continued that she didn’t “understand how anybody thinks this was funny....he’s a late-night host. He crosses the line. But when you cross the line with an 18-year-old, I just think we have gotten to the point where the jokes now are just really mean and have no impact.”

The CNN anchor then asked Seder and Snowden, “Where do you draw the line between being provocative and being offensive when you’re- when you’re commentating, as these guys do, on the late- night talk shows?” Seder, a talk show host for the left-wing Air America, made light of Letterman’s joke: “He’s making a joke. But, you know, that said, I am a father, and if someone made a joke about Alex Rodriguez knocking up my daughter, I would take offense. But that’s because I’m a Red Sox fan.” He also defended it as a “funny joke” and justified it: “He’s simply making a joke, and he’s done it for- he’s done it for years and years, and he’s done it about all sorts of people- all different ages.”

Anchor Rick Sanchez used another crazed gunman’s rampage to blast conservative media during CNN’s Newsroom program on Thursday, and brought on Media Matters’ Eric Boehlert as his aide to bash talk radio and Fox News. He hinted that the white supremacist who killed a guard at the U.S. Holocaust Museum, might have been “motivated to move by right-wing pronouncements...on some TV and radio outlets.”

Sanchez began his panel discussion with Boehlert and Accuracy in Media’s Roger Aronoff at the end of the 3 pm Eastern hour of the CNN program with his indicting line of questioning against conservative radio and TV: “Was there a tone in this country that was actually started with the election of our first black president that is bringing the crazies out of the woodwork, and are they being motivated to move by right-wing pronouncements, like he’s dangerous- he’s a socialist- he’s a Muslim, and he isn’t even a U.S. citizen? This is what we hear on some TV and radio outlets.”

After introducing his two guests, the CNN anchor let the left-wing partisan Boehlert “start with the premise” which, of course, echoed the preceding introduction: “I don’t think there’s any doubt since Barack Obama’s been elected, there’s been a complete unhinged reaction from the conservative movement in America, and sort of this vigilante and- and militia-style rhetoric has become a cornerstone of the movement, and certainly of conservative media.”

On Monday’s Newsroom program, CNN anchor Rick Sanchez tried to justify that Cindy Sheehan is still worth covering, as the unrelenting left-wing activist recently protested near the Dallas home of former President George W. Bush. When Republican strategist Rich Galen advised that she should stop protesting and that the press ignore her, Sanchez went out of his way to find an angle for covering her.

Sanchez brought on Galen and Democratic strategist Maria Cardona to discuss the Sheehan protest during the bottom half of the 3 pm Eastern hour of the CNN program. He first asked Cardona, “Should she [Sheehan] let it go?” The strategist answered by putting her cause in the wider context of all the parents of servicemen who were killed during the Iraq war. When she concluded her answer by asking rhetorically, “who are we to say yes or no” to Sheehan, Galen jumped in and replied, “I can say yes or no. The answer’s no, I’m afraid.”

Dallas Morning News’s Wayne Slater become one of the first pundits after the shootings at the Holocaust Museum on Wednesday to hint that there was a connection to mainstream conservative activists. On CNN Newsroom, about two hours after the story broke, Slater linked this incident and the murder of abortionist George Tiller with “anti-tax secessionists in Texas,” his label for Tea Party protesters.

Anchor Rick Sanchez moderated a panel discussion on the Holocaust Museum shootings after the bottom of the 3 pm Eastern hour of the CNN program, in which Slater participated. Sanchez asked the Dallas Morning News political writer if criminals like this suspect are “motivated or do they need to be motivated?” He replied, not including the shooting of Tiller, but reaching back to include the Oklahoma City bombing perpetuated by Timothy McVeigh:

SLATER: They absolutely need to be motivated and are being motivated. Each of these episodes in recent weeks- whether it’s [the] killing of an abortion doctor- whether it was this Holocaust denier today, or whether it was others- whether you’re talking about Tim McVeigh or anti-tax secessionists in Texas- the interesting thing is they’re all separate, but they’re all hearing portions of the same echo chamber, a kind of dialogue- a toxic dialogue that’s subterranean in large parts. Remember, the man who was accused- who is accused of the most recent shooting of the abortion doctor, according to his ex-wife, had connections with the Montana Freemen, a kind of wild radical secessionist group. You hear not only these conversations about blacks and Jews, but about the government and about other hate-filled issues. It is- although they are separate- they are connected by a kind of dialogue of toxic ideology.

Dr. LeRoy Carhart had ample television time to further his cause against "domestic terrorism" on the news program Anderson Cooper 360 on Monday night. Anderson Cooper, the anchor, asked Carhart some direct questions, but failed to press Carhart on the answers, and didn't interview anyone from the mainstream anti-abortion movement.

After a brief news segment concerning Scott Roeder, Cooper asked Carhart, "You probably heard from Ted Rowland's piece some of the things this man Scott Roeder [the man charged with the murder of abortionist George Tiller] has said. He said he called the closing of this [Tiller's] clinic quote ‘a victory for unborn children.' How do you respond?"