How perfect.  The director of some of Hollywood's most revoltingly violent, sexually explicit, culturally corrosive movies has an even more destructive hobby on the side: iconoclasm. 

Paul Verhoeven, director of "Basic Instinct," "Robocop" and "Showgirls," turns out to be a member of the academically suspect Jesus Seminar, and in September he will publish a book attacking the foundational Christian doctrine that Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit.

For the past twenty years, the Dutch filmmaker has reportedly been attending meetings of the Jesus Seminar and researching his biography, "Jesus of Nazareth: A Realistic Portrait."  Fox News quotes a spokesman for Amsterdam publishing house J.M. Meulenhoff saying Verhoeven "hopes it will be a springboard" for making a movie about Jesus' life.

Wall Street saw a 391-point rally on the Dow today, the first day of the second quarter. ABCNews.com saw the development worthy of a "Breaking News" tag towards the top of its Web page and put the story in the top headlines rotation.

But it appears that ABCNews.com was alone among its competitors in trumpeting the news. I checked numerous Web sites shortly after 5:30 and found ABC's to be the only one to give the rally top billing. [see the screencaps below the page break]

Al Gore has made a lot of money and publicity with his crusade against global warming. I have written in the past how this whole crusade seems to be based on a Big Lie, and its real purpose appears more intended to get global government so the rest of the world (ie. the United Nations) can gain control over the United States' many assets without having to go through the awkward exercise of actually getting a their authority recognized by the US Congress.

However, there has been a backlash against the Gore Warming crusade (fueled partly by Gore's own hypocrisy in using large motorcades, private jets and his lavish lifestyle- none of which are designed to show others that he is serious about the entire issue. Not that the press has bothered to do any real reporting- they have fallen in line with Gore's crusade lock, stock and barrel- refusing to report on critics and making statements equating said critics with Nazis and other undesirables. However, the evidence is mounting that Gore and his global warming friends are no more accurate in their claims than Newsweek was in its new ice age campaign in the 1970s.

Carl Cameron reports that Thompson is calling it quits...

Thompson to Drop Presidential Bid

Fred Thompson plans to drop his presidential bid, FOX News learned Tuesday.

Thompson has begun calling friends, family members and supporters to tell them his campaign is over. He left Nashville Tuesday afternoon for McLean, Va., where he is expected to make an announcement about his campaign as early as Tuesday night.

The former Tennessee senator and actor has not won any early primary or caucus contests and finished third in the South Carolina primary Saturday.

Is this the end of a conservative Republican Party???

About a week ago, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown suggested in a UK Telegraph column that allowing hospitals to harvest organs from dead patients without their prior consent or their families' post-mortem consent might be a good idea.

Mr. Brown's occasion for bringing up the topic was telling, and perhaps explains why Brown's proposal got very little coverage in the US:

This year will be the 60th anniversary of the National Health Service: a year to celebrate and thank all the staff who run our hospitals, clinics and GP practices; but also a year in which to renew the NHS for the 21st century, because I believe that only by renewal can we make the NHS even more relevant for future decades than it has been in the past.

..... we may need to do more to encourage more of us to donate (organs. In Britain we have 14.9 million people on the organ donor register - which is around 24 per cent of the population. In terms of actual donors (not just people willing to give, but those whose organs are actually used) we have a rate of about 13 donors per million in our population. This compares with about 22 per million in France, 25 per million in America and around 35 per million in Spain - the best in the world.

That is why I want to start a debate in this country about whether we should take steps to move towards a new system designed to enable far more of us to benefit from transplant surgery - one that better reflects survey findings that around 90 per cent of us are in favour of organ donation.

Chris Wallace and Mike Huckabee campaign chairman Ed Rollins got into it a bit during an interview on Fox News after the announcement that Huckabee took Iowa. During the exchange Wallace had asked Rollins about a blog article that appeared on Townhall.com where Rollins was allegedly overheard bad mouthing Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson and Rudy Giuliani.

The blog article must have hit a sore spot as Rollins became defensive in explaining his comments that appeared in the blog entry while confirming that he did indeed say some of the things that were attributed to him. (video at Webloggin)

Wallace took the opportunity to follow up on that answer in an exchange where Rollins became agitated, calling Wallace and the rest of the Washington press corps "wise men", with a final swipe that "all the wisdom doesn't live in the press corps."

Hillary Clinton fundraiser Norman Hsu was indicted earlier today in a $20 million Ponzi scheme. I received a text message e-mail alert to this effect shortly after 1:30 p.m. Eastern. Given the heated lead-up to Iowa and New Hampshire, it's major news. In a 24/7 media cycle, it's inconceivable that it major news organization Web sites could not or would not give it top billing shortly after the news broke.

Yet at 3 p.m. today, a review of some major media Web sites showed no prominence given to the story. MSNBC.com didn't have a teaser headline for it until its "local news" box for WNBC, the NBC network's East Coast flagship in New York City:

Fox News, by contrast, had this tease prominently displayed on it's front page:

A major political figure calls for the torture and execution of homosexuals and the mainstream media ignores it. Why? Could it be because the individual is a high level Iranian official? The story "Gays Deserve Torture, Death Penalty, Iranian Minister Says" appeared on the front page of FoxNews.com, yet it was nowhere to be found on CNN’s, MSNBC’s, ABC News’, or CBS News’ websites.

The Fox News story, lifted from The Times of London, reports that in a "peace conference" with British MP’s in May, the leader of the Iranian delegation, Mohsen Yahyavi, stated according to the article that "homosexuals deserve to be executed, or tortured, and possibly both."

"The Times" story, appearing on the Fox News website, reports on the meeting as follows:

A common practice in the liberal mainstream media is the exaggeration of certain headlines in order to increase the "scandal factor" of a given politically correct story.  This does not happen often at Fox News due to their "fair and balanced" approach.  Unfortunately, it did happen in a recent headline from a non-story about one disgruntled female employee suing GE for discrimination.

The headline reads: "Lawsuit: GE Discriminates Against 1,500 Female Workers"

Wow!  1,500 women are suing for this? Wait, look what we find out when we read deeper:

Schaefer's suit, which is seeking class-action status, seeks $500 million in damages for a class of about 1,500 to 1,700 GE women executives and lawyers, according her attorney, David Sanford of Sanford Wittels & Heisler LP.

On the May 19th edition of Fox News Channel's Geraldo at Large, host Geraldo Rivera went on another pro-illegal immigrant rant. Commenting on the debate over the new immigration bill Rivera declared: "The deal beefs up border security, at the same time it allows millions here, illegally, to emerge from the shadows." Rivera then went on to spotlight the story of one illegal that was stuck in the "shadows."

The following is the full segment as reported by Geraldo and his brother and fellow Fox News reporter, Craig Rivera:

Geraldo Rivera: "So now up-front tonight the President praised senators of both parties for crafting a potential fix for the nation's broken immigration policies. The deal beefs up border security, at the same time it allows millions here, illegally, to emerge from the shadows. But whether Congress will pass the controversial bill into law is far from certain. Here's the President from his Texas ranch where he and the First Lady are spending the weekend."

FoxNews.com is following up on the Fort Dix terror plot by probing how the three illegal immigrant suspects got into the country in the first place.

Below the jump I've posted a creencap taken shortly after 2 p.m. EDT from the Fox News front page.

Fox News correspondent Catherine Herridge contributed to the story, entitled, "Sources: Brothers Charged in Alleged Fort Dix Terror Plot May Have Been Smuggled Into U.S.":

FORT DIX, N.J. — The three brothers being charged as part of the alleged Fort Dix terror plot may have been smuggled across the border, FOX News has learned.

[...]

Four of the arrested men were born in the former Yugoslavia, one was born in Jordan and one came from Turkey, authorities said. Three were in the United States illegally; two had green cards allowing them to stay in this country permanently; and the sixth is a U.S. citizen.

Federal investigators are now checking whether the latter three lied on their immigration paperwork to remain in the United States.

Earlier today I wondered if MSNBC.com was bored with the Fort Dix terror plot story.

Well, here's an update. It appears they still are.

As of 7:00 p.m. EDT tonight, both FoxNews.com and CNN give the Fort Dix terror plot story prime real estate. Not so for MSNBC. See MSNBC screencap below and check here and here for Fox and CNN screencaps respectively.