In her story about pardon applications submitted to the Bush Justice Department before the President leaves office, the Associated Press's Lara Jakes Jordan made it seem as if pardon applicants appealing directly to the president is a new thing, and whitewashed the last-minute flurry of pardons granted by Bill Clinton in 2001.

Here are the key passages from Jordan's story:

Some high-profile convicts past and present are among more than 2,000 people asking President George W. Bush to pardon them or commute their prison sentences before he leaves office.

Junk-bond king Michael Milken, media mogul Conrad Black and American-born Taliban soldier John Walker Lindh have applied to the Justice Department seeking official forgiveness.

But with Bush's term ending Jan. 20, some lawyers are lobbying the White House directly to pardon their clients. That raises the possibility that the president could excuse scores of people, including some who have not been charged, to protect them from future accusations, such as former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales or star baseball pitcher Roger Clemens.

This particular Palin report is funny for it's cluelessness, but a spokesman for the Internet search engine company Lycos is astounded that people are still interested enough in Governor Sarah Palin to put her name in the search field of an Internet search engine like Lycos or Google. After all, we have Obama, now, the spokesman says. Why do we need Palin info still?

The quotes from Kathy O’Reilly, a spokeswoman for Lycos, were reported by Politico last week and goes to show that the appeal of Sarah Palin is still little understood in many quarters.

Sarah Palin has stayed in the list of the top 5 Internet searches since she was chosen as John McCain's running mate in October.

There is a terrific Gary Larson cartoon (right) showing a psychiatrist jotting notes down about his patient who is talking while reclining on a couch. On his notepad, the shrink is writing, "Just plain nuts!" Well, that is the feeling of your humble correspondent about psychologist Lauren Slater after reading the beyond bizarre recollections of her "love life" in the New York Times. And why on earth did the Times even publish her sanity challenged screed? Were they hoping the shock value would help boost their sagging circulation? In any event, I must warn the reader about continuing further. To read Slater's much too personal account could cause you to want to take a scorchingly hot shower to wash away all filthy memories of her sordid life: 

I COULD chalk it up to getting older, the fact that sex interests me these days about as much as playing checkers. But the fact is I’ve never much liked sex, even though it has, on occasion, captivated me. Says my proverbial therapist: “Sex threatens you, Lauren. You feel overcome.”

Another distinctly less sexy possibility is that I have never much liked sex because, when all is said and done, there’s not much to like. I mean, really: What is the big deal? Especially when it’s with the same person, over and over again; from an evolutionary standpoint, that simply couldn’t be right. I, for one, have always become bored of sex within the first six months of meeting a man, the act paling for me just as the sun pales at the approach of winter, and as predictably, too.

On the Swampland blog, Time’s Joe Klein is beating the press for asking "inane" questions that suggest that Barack Obama’s words on the campaign trail might still matter, not to mention tick-tock process questions about how Obama and Clinton hammered out this potentially troublesome team-of-rivals arrangement. While Klein suggested these questions don’t elicit news, you can also sense that Klein doesn’t want anyone trying to trip up Obama or make him look petty:

I was struck by the inanity of most of the questions from my colleagues. Granted, these are political reporters, not national security or foreign policy specialists, but what sort of journalist expects the President-elect to tell the "inside story" of how he selected Hillary Clinton? (Those sorts of stories, if told at all, are wrenched from aides on background--and reported only after consulting multiple sources.)

On Sunday's episode of "60 Minutes" (11/30/08), Lara Logan profiled Army hero Private Monica Brown, an 18-year-old medic who was awarded the Silver Star. Yet as wonderful as Brown's heroics were, Logan's profile could not shake the impression that it really wanted to get in some cheap shots at the United States military. Here's how Logan opened her piece:

Private Monica Brown is only the second woman to be awarded the Silver Star since the Second World War. She’s an Army medic who risked her own life to save two critically wounded paratroopers of the 82nd airborne division in Afghanistan.

O.K. so far. But then Logan abruptly switched gears:

Under Army regulations, women cannot be assigned to front-line combat units, but in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq today, that’s exactly where they often end up. Some male soldiers aren’t so happy about that, including members of Private Brown’s own unit. But her superior officers say she’s a hero, a hero who earned one of the military’s highest awards for exceptional valor when she was only 18 years old.

That women "cannot be assigned to front-line combat units" is a theme that Logan hammered throughout her piece. The problem? Private Brown was not on a front-line combat mission. As Logan's own story indicated, Brown was a medic in a unit that had been "searching for weapons in a village" when it was ambushed while returning to base. (By the way, Logan identifies those who ambushed our men and woman simply as "hidden enemy fighters.")

Note to Chris Matthews: when mocking someone for using a ghostwriter, it's best to avoid doing so on a day when Hillary Clinton is prominently in the news . . .

On this evening's Hardball, Matthews went out of his way to mock Joe The Plumber for his use of a ghostwriter on his just-released book.  This on the day Hillary Clinton was in the headlines, having been named Barack Obama's Secretary of State.  You know, Hillary Clinton.  The woman famous, in writing "It Takes A Village," for failing to credit her . . . ghostwriter.

On Sunday’s Chris Matthews Show, host Matthews led the panel in a discussion over whether conservatives would choose to cooperate with the Obama administration in making "historic changes" to repair the economy, rather than stand in opposition to his programs. The premise of the discussion seemed to be that times are too serious for conservatives to dare dissent from Obama’s plans. At one point, David Ignatius of the Washington Post suggested that "thoughtful" Republicans will work with Obama as he referred to John McCain’s concession speech. Ignatius: "I thought that John McCain set the tone for thoughtful Republicans in his concession speech election night, where he reached out to Obama. He was remarkably generous. One of the best speeches he's ever made, in my book."

As he teased the show, Matthews seemed to wonder if Republicans would try to stand in the way of Obama accomplishing "great things," or if they would see the light and cooperate. Matthews: "Will the mountain of crises our country faces make Barack Obama do great things? And with all the crises, will even Republicans see historic steps are required?"

Author and Hillary Clinton biographer Carl Bernstein said he was hired at CNN for Campaign 2008 to "examine the real lives and records" of the presidential candidates "and their political machines." But now that the campaign is over, Bernstein sounded like the era of skeptical analysis is over. He announced on Tuesday that the media needs to "ratchet down our own cynicism" and ponder the smarts and "sheer star power" Hillary Clinton can bring to the State Department. Bernstein also attacked Republicans for issuing a critical press release. "The Republicans are in very rough shape right now. And putting out the kind of statement they did this afternoon, the idea, the old cliche about politics stopping at the water's edge before this gentleman even gets a chance to be president of the United States, was quite extraordinary." As if the Democrats didn’t criticize President Bush on foreign policy?

In the 1 pm hour of CNN’s Newsroom, anchor Betty Nguyen asked Bernstein if Hillary was a good fit with Team Obama:

Following coverage of a Monday morning news conference in which President-elect Barack Obama announced his national security team, CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric observed: "...two initially surprising centrist choices for his so-called team of rivals. Senator Hillary Clinton as secretary of state, and of course Bush Defense Secretary Robert Gates." She then asked political analyst Jeff Greenfield: "...in a way, this inoculates President-Elect Obama from criticism that he is somehow soft in the area of foreign policy, doesn't it?" Greenfield replied: "Yeah, I think so."

Greenfield went on to explain: "If he's going to pursue a different course, emphasizing diplomacy and international aid, if you have people like General Jones and Secretary Gates, and Hillary Clinton, who's relatively hawkish for a Democrat, it doesn't sound like a Kumbaya, let's just trust everybody. These are hard-headed realists and I think it helps him pursue that foreign policy." Couric followed up: "What about the confirmation process? Do you think there will be tough questions for Senator Clinton?...any road blocks during that process?" Greenfield responded: "One interesting thing is there are no -- I'll use this term -- fire-breathing conservative Republicans on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Nobody who's looking to make points going after Bill Clinton."

Less than nine months ago, the Obama campaign was slamming Hillary Clinton as utterly unqualified on foreign policy, having had no substantive experience during her husband’s administration and being dreadfully wrong in her judgment as a Senator when it came to “the most critical foreign policy judgment of our generation,” the war in Iraq.

A March 11, 2008 memo by Obama ally (and now incoming White House Counsel) Gregory Craig suggested Clinton (unlike Obama) was using “false charges and exaggerated claims to play politics with national security.” The memo was passed around as Clinton was slamming Obama as not ready to take a “3am phone call” on a national emergency.

Yet today, as President-elect Barack Obama named Hillary Clinton to the top foreign policy post in his administration, none of the three broadcast networks chose to disrupt the moment by reminding anyone of Obama’s argument of a few months ago that, when it came to foreign policy, Clinton is an inexperienced phony. [UPDATE at end]

New York Times economics reporter Peter Goodman certainly can't be accused of dry writing. Goodman constantly draws attention to his economics stories (often well-positioned by editors) with sharp criticism of capitalism, and he reached a new level of leftist abstraction in his Sunday Week in Review piece on the early-morning shopping stampede at a Long Island Wal-Mart that resulted in the trampling death of an employee, "A Shopping Guernica Captures the Moment."

From the high-brow yet histrionic headline (here's some background on the German bombing of the Spanish city of Guernica) to the inflated prose, it's good, chewy bias in Goodman's favored Marxist professor mode (as prominently displayed in his December 2007 story headlined "The Free Market: A False Idol After All?").

Goodman is eager to paint the Wal-Mart rampagers as some species of victim -- if not of capitalism directly, then the marketing that is selling capitalism to the people in this time of crisis.

From the Great Depression, we remember the bread lines. From the oil shocks of the 1970s, we recall lines of cars snaking from gas stations. And from our current moment, we may come to remember scenes like the one at a Long Island Wal-Mart in the dawn after Thanksgiving, when 2,000 frantic shoppers trampled to death an employee who stood between them and the bargains within.

On CBS’s Sunday Morning, host Charles Osgood teased a story on politician Harvey Milk, who was the first gay man elected to San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors in 1977: "The story of a rebel with a cause is being retold in the form of a just-released motion picture. And as it happens, the timing could hardly be more appropriate." The movie, starring left-wing actor Sean Penn, is set to come out just after the 30th anniversary of Milk’s murder, as correspondent John Blackstone explained: "He became the first openly gay man elected to office in the United States. A breakthrough that ended with assassination. Harvey Milk served less than a year here on San Francisco's Board of Supervisors but it was a year that changed history."

Blackstone, who has done numerous stories on Californians efforts to legalize gay marriage, made a comparison between Milk’s election and the current battle over Proposition 8: "In California, the renewed battle over same sex marriage has echoes in a new movie about triumph and tragedy in San Francisco 30 years ago...It is an accident of timing. Just as gay right activists have taken to the streets, angry over the ban on same sex marriage in California, the struggle for gay rights has also moved to the big screen."

A multitude of organizations, hundreds of thousands of individuals join together to defend the First Amendment from a reinstatement of the so-called "Fairness" Doctrine

Editor's Note: You too can join the Free Speech Alliance.  Click here and sign the petition, and stand at the ready for whenever any liberal again threatens the First Amendment with talk of reinstating the Censorship Doctrine.   

Spreading the Word

The Media Research Center today officially announced the Free Speech Alliance, a gathering of a multitude of organizations and hundreds of thousands of individual citizens dedicated to ensuring that the Censorship Doctrine, mis-named the "Fairness" Doctrine, is never again reinstated.

The Free Speech Alliance member organizations are themselves engaged in a wide array of issues, but they all recognize the preeminent importance of defending the First Amendment and protecting free speech from government censorship, a fundamental Constitutional safeguard.

The Free Speech Alliance member organizations thus far:

A lot, they influence public perception which in turn influences investor confidence

Some, they influence things but individuals' private knowledge is more influential

Very little

Don't know

Over the course of two segments and seven minutes, "Good Morning America" co-host Diane Sawyer on Monday completely ignored the party affiliation of a Kansas City mayor embroiled in a lawsuit over racist remarks and charges of nepotism, at no point identifying Mayor Mark Funkhouser as a Democrat. The only designation of Funkhouser came in the form of a bland, onscreen graphic: "Mayor Mark Funkhouser (Kansas City, Missouri)."

Funkhouser has been battling his own city council since they passed a law barring his wife from working at city hall. Additionally, as Sawyer explained, a former city employee has filed a lawsuit "accusing the mayor and his wife of making racist remarks," such as referring to the African American woman as "mammy." A November 21 Wall Street Journal article, from which the GMA segment is based, managed to label Funkhouser a Democrat in the second sentence.

Birmingham, Alabama Mayor Larry Langford has been arrested.

His party is not mentioned in the story at AL.com.

Langford is Democrat (even Wikipedia took a while before naming his party).

Here are key paragraphs from the story:

Everything good that happens is because of Barack Obama.  Everything bad is attributable to George Bush or Dick Cheney or Sarah Palin or some other Republican.  In keeping with these mainstream media-manufactured verities, USA Today's Web site reports "President-elect Obama's actions perk up stock market."  The story begins:

President-elect Barack Obama hasn't even moved into the White House yet. But Wall Street is already showering him with praise for injecting confidence into the battered psyche of investors and working quickly to hatch a plan meant to jolt the economy out of its worst funk in decades.

A market that two weeks ago was desperate for political leadership and a clear strategy to repair the economy appears t