Q. Is there any level to which Helen Thomas won't stoop?

A. Apparently not.

That's my conclusion, based on Thomas's exchange during today's press gaggle with White House Press Secretary Dana Perino. Here is the front page of today's Washington Post to which Thomas refers [warning: graphic image]. A slide-show from WaPo's web edition contains another photo of what appears to be the same child, with this legend:

Two-year-old Ali Hussein is pulled from the rubble of his family's home in the Shiite stronghold of Sadr City in Baghdad, Iraq on Tuesday, April 29, 2008. The child, who later died in hospital, was in one of four homes allegedly destroyed by U.S. missiles. More than two dozen people were killed when Shiite militants ambushed a U.S. patrol in Baghdad's embattled Sadr City district, bringing the death toll in area on Tuesday to more than 30, a U.S. military spokesman and Iraqi officials said. (AP Photo/Karim Kadim)

Here's the exchange between Thomas and Perino.

HELEN THOMAS: Do you think it's worth a million Iraqi deaths, to continue to bomb the Iraqis who did nothing to us?

Long-time White House correspondent turned loose-cannon Helen Thomas hasn't been sold on Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama like many of her colleagues in the mainstream media.

Thomas, now a columnist for Hearst Newspapers, told a Bethesda, Md. audience the race between Obama and Clinton has gotten mean-spirited. She attacked the role of bloggers in the news cycle, but that wasn't before she had some very harsh criticisms of Obama's rise in popularity.

"We're in the midst of a presidential campaign which is really getting rotten - down and dirty between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama," Thomas said. "The Democratic candidates - Obama has the edge, he's a rock star. He's galvanized the youth vote of this country, but I have yet to see what he has done to take the highest office in the land. He is no Martin Luther King and his campaign, like all others, is backed by people with deep pockets."

The hard-left hootenanny known as the "National Conference on Media Reform," -- usually ahem, distinguished by a long Bill Moyers rant about the media being saps for the neoconservative war machine -- has a new star this year: Dan Rather. The former CBS anchor will join Moyers, Arianna Huffington, Katrina Vanden Heuvel and Pacifica's Amy Goodman in calling for courageous, independent (read: radical left) journalism, free of corporate cowardice, from June 6 to 8 in Minneapolis.

Former UPI reporter Helen Thomas is also hitting the left-wing hustings, this very weekend, in fact. She is a keynote speaker at the Women, Action & Media (WAM!) Conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts, sponsored by a group called the Center for New Words and the Women's Studies program at MIT. Leftist sponsors also include the sites Alternet, Feminist.com, the Feministing blog, and the magazines Bitch, Dollars and Sense, and In These Times.

The so-called "dean of the White House press corps" is at it again - not abusing her front row position at White House press briefings and criticizing the Bush administration, but this time by taking shots at the new media.

Helen Thomas, columnist for Hearst newspapers and long-time White House Press Corp member, blamed bloggers for contributing to the "deterioration" of journalism that led to the Iraq war.

[Click Here For Audio]

I don't know... I don't feel that dangerous. But, gee, I guess I am? Well I might be, at least according to Helen Thomas, one of the most uncivil "reporters" in all of journalism. Apparently she has proclaimed that citizen journalists and bloggers are "dangerous" on a HuffPo blog of December 4. HuffPoster Seema Kalia reported an exchange with the equine visaged Thomas where she raised alarm over her fear of the common American citizen and that terribly annoying Internet thingie. Yes, folks she thinks that if you are a blogger or Internet writer you have no sense of "ethics" and you are "Dangerous." One wonders if she really knows any journalists at all if she thinks they show any sign of "ethics"?

Between her tirades against White House press secretary Dana Perino, Helen Thomas granted an interview to the Huffington Post about how she has never made a major mistake. "I don't have any mistakes to tell you about," she said. The Huffington Post’s Seema Kalia replied: "You don't have any recollection of any time you didn't do something well?" Thomas said: "No, not that I know of. I don't say I'm perfect, and I do say I've made mistakes, but nothing that's colossal." This is not the standard she’s used to judge President Bush, writing at least two columns that lamented his answers to list-your-mistakes questions from the White House press corps.

As NewsBusters reported over the weekend, liberal antagonist Helen Thomas was deliciously smacked down during last Friday's press briefing by White House press secretary Dana Perino.

Fox News's Bill O'Reilly must have heard about this wonderful event, for on Monday's "O'Reilly Factor," the conservative host played some of the encounter for his viewers, and then offered his own opinion.

What follows is a partial transcript of this segment (video available here):

White House Press Secretary Dana Perino gave conservatives and right-thinking Americans across the fruited plain an early Christmas present Friday by smacking down liberal antagonist and so-called "journalist" Helen Thomas.

During Friday's press briefing, when Thomas pressured Perino about American troops killing people in Iraq, the Secretary scolded Thomas for her despicable behavior:

Helen, I find it really unfortunate that you use your front row position, bestowed upon you by your colleagues, to make such statements. This is a -- it is an honor and a privilege to be in the briefing room, and to suggest that we, at the United States, are killing innocent people is just absurd and very offensive.

Indeed. Those interested in early gifts should watch the entire delicious exchange while reading the partial transcript that follows (video available here, h/t NB reader Damian G. and Bryan at Hot Air):

When you have the following meeting of the minds in a public forum - NBC News White House Correspondent David Gregory, former "CBS Evening News" anchor Dan Rather, New York Times White House correspondent David Sanger, and former White House bureau chief and correspondent for United Press International Helen Thomas - there's a near certainty something outrageous will be said.

And that was the case on November 26 at The National Press Club when this roundtable discussion occurred for the taping of "The Kalb Report," a public affairs program broadcasted on various television stations throughout the country.

[Click here for audio]

Gregory Considers White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett a ‘Minister of Propaganda'

Helen Thomas is a "stalwart of the White House press corps who wields candor like a weapon of mass instruction," gushed Seattle Post-Intelligencer managing editor David McCumber in a November 2 post at his paper's Big Blog.

In a short video of her Friday appearance, Thomas regales the P-I newsroom audience with her tired left-wing ravings about how the Bush administration lied to get the United States into war with Iraq, and how President Bush must have been utterly amazed at how sheep-like the media were in the lead-up to war. McCumber was so enchanted by her presence that he included what he considered to be a pearl of wisdom from the reporter-turned-front-row-Bush-basher:

White House correspondent and Hearst columnist Helen Thomas was apparently the "highlight" of a September 30 fundraiser for Democratic Virginia State Senate candidate George Barker.

[She's really burning up the D.C.-area rubber chicken circuit of late. I noted her early September pep talk to University of Maryland Democrats here.]

Wrote contributor snolan of the liberal Virginia politics blog Raising Kaine:

I know, it's a dog-bites-man story, but I thought I'd pass along that longtime White House correspondent and left-wing columnist Helen Thomas addressed the College Democrats at the University of Maryland on Wednesday evening.

I live close to the campus, but unfortunately found out about the event after the fact and hence was unable to drop in and take in my own observations. Fortunately Maryland's student paper The Diamondback covered the event. Unfortunately the reporter covering the assignment failed to press Thomas on her commanding respect as a journalist while forsaking any attempt to objectively report news from her perch at the White House. In fact reporter Chidima Okaparanta labeled Thomas's abrasive technique as a "straight-shooting reporting style, especially regarding the war in Iraq."

Below are some excerpts with portions in bold reflecting my emphasis:

Helen Thomas, the Hearst columnist and long-time scourge of Republican presidents as UPI White House correspondent, was "miffed" at Doonesbury cartoonist Garry Trudeau because he joked that the rumors were that she was Harry Truman's lover: "I wished he said I was Jack Kennedy's lover."

If that makes Thomas sound like a liberated woman, that would be in line with her recent Planned Parenthood luncheon speech in Iowa, where she claimed conservatives would love to deny women even their right to vote: "It seems now, more than ever, the Supreme Court is prepared to put Americans -- especially women -- back in the 19th century if not earlier...Women, in particular, have to be more vigilant. They can never let go and think that the battle is won. There has been a chipping-away at every advance we've had. Pretty soon they'll be taking aim at the vote."

I took the liberty of taking what are perhaps the five worst, most biased questions in today's White House news conference (see earlier live blog thread here and official White House transcript here).

Video (3:15): Real (2.38 MB) or Windows (1.99 MB), plus MP3 audio (1.11 MB).

It starts with Helen Thomas insisting that President Bush is responsible for al Qaeda in Iraq and ends with Martha Raddatz of ABC News misconstruing a new report on al Qaeda to conclude the terror network's threat is "greater than ever now." NBC's David Gregory and CBS's Jim Axelrod are also included. All questions betray an alarmist and defeatist tone on Iraq and/or push President Bush to consider hypotheticals involving Democrats passing legislation to curtail his management of the war.

The Networks ‘Lame’ Argument

On June 12, all three morning shows parroted DNC talking points and declared President Bush a "lame duck." "Good Morning America" solemnly noted that the phrase would likely follow Bush throughout his trip to Capitol Hill. (Apparently this is the theory that if the networks say something enough, everyone will believe it.)

Please Don’t Be Mad

Speaking of "Good Morning America," co-anchor Chris Cuomo conducted a groveling interview with Michael Moore in which he backtracked from calling the liberal filmmaker’s new movie a stunt. "Look, I like the stunt," he corrected.

Sorry, Jack

Apparently CNN’s Jack Cafferty is having a Vietnam flashback. He recently lemented that anti-war protestors aren’t "tearing up college campuses."

Washington Times reporter Jon Ward's April 24 article about Tony Snow substitute Dana Perino (pictured at right) is getting a bit of buzz among conservative bloggers such as Kathryn Jean Lopez, Ed Driscoll, and Mary Katharine Ham. Here's what's got them buzzing:

When Mrs. Thomas, 86, kept firing questions at Mrs. Perino, 34, the presidential spokeswoman cut her off.

"Do you want me to answer the question, Helen, or do you want to ask questions? It's really hard to concentrate here. What's your question?" Mrs. Perino demanded.

Mrs. Thomas replied, "You repeat yourself so much that. "

"So do you," Mrs. Perino interrupted, then immediately called on another reporter.

Mrs. Perino is "the first press secretary to cut Helen Thomas no slack," said Ann Compton of ABC News, who has spent more than three decades as a White House correspondent.

Contributors to NewsBusters and MRC.org have frequently documented Thomas's biased tirades and tantrums from the daily press briefings.

Below are links to some Thomas-related items from NB and MRC archives:

Here’s a story guaranteed to make every conservative in America instantly happy: when the newly renovated White House pressroom opens for business, Helen Thomas will not be sitting in the front row.

As reported by Politico (h/t Hot Air, emphasis mine throughout):

The press corps is scheduled to move from temporary facilities back into the spiffed-up, rewired briefing room in May or June. [Helen] Thomas, who has been questioning presidents and press secretaries for 46 years, plans to be there. But her front-row seat won’t be. Plans call for her to be moved to the second row to make room for a cable news channel – a sign of Washington’s changing pecking order, and of the new ways that Americans get their news.

I think that deserves a standing ovation! Yet, the fun wasn’t over:

It’s safe to say that columnist Helen Thomas is not a favorite figure in the White House pressroom as far as conservatives are concerned. On Wednesday morning, the “Fox & Friends” crew discussed the revelation that the Fox News Channel has asked for a better seat during gaggles and pressers in the newly renovated pressroom once it’s completed, one in the front row in fact.

Co-host Steve Doocy mentioned that FNC and another cable outlet have asked for this privilege, but as the new design only includes one more front-row seat, Helen Thomas would have to be kicked out of her chair to accommodate both outlets.

This set up a comical discussion between the gang, including a viewer poll about the issue (video available here).

Anne Schroeder at The Politico started a new rumor that when the newly renovated White House Briefing Room is ready, perhaps the new seating chart will move caterwauling Hearst columnist Helen Thomas (no longer a reporter, more like a Sheehan-style anti-war protester) out of her traditional seat on the front row. For those who do not recall, Helen left United Press International way back in 2000 rather than work for new owners when it was sold to conservatives at The Washington Times.

The new room will have an added seat in each row, but both CNN and Fox News want to move up, so moving Helen would be the logical move to acknowledge that cable-news networks perhaps have more importance 24-7 than once-a-week columnists for Hearst. (Back when I was in the room in '01 and '02, FNC was often sitting in row 3 or 4, not even the second row.)

Since I mentioned Helen Thomas's honors in Washington last night, I should add she was hailed as a celebrity at the radical-left National Conference for Media Reform in Memphis a couple of weeks ago. One of her interviews there was with the radical Pacifica Radio show "Democracy Now." She lamented that there aren't enough protesters hitting the street against the war in Iraq like in the glory days of the Vietnam War. But she also praised Jimmy Carter's book condemning Israel for "Apartheid" against the Palestinians. First, the Vietnam talk:

AMY GOODMAN: But how does this compare? Does it bring back any memories of other wars?

HELEN THOMAS: It's deja-vu all over again with Vietnam, except the difference is our passive society. At least during Vietnam, they hit the streets. The people hit the streets finally, when they realized there had been deception, and it was a no-go. Too many -- we were killing people 10,000 miles away, and the reason could not be explained, except the domino theory, which was fading.

Jose Antonio Vargas covered the Washington Press Club Foundation dinner in the capital last night for The Washington Post, and the liberals were handing over the highest compliments to one honoree, long-standing leftist UPI reporter Helen Thomas, now a Hearst columnist and author of a book scolding the rest of the press corps for being Bush tools: 

On behalf of the House of Representatives, we salute Helen Thomas," said Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. "You could have gotten [this award] over and over again, Helen."

"One of the greatest reporters in the history of the republic," Kennedy called her.