As accusations against Americans go, surely there's none more serious than that of responsibility for 9/11. Yet Maureen Dowd has seen fit to level just such a charge against Condi Rice en passant: as a simple afterthought, no explanation offered.

There I was this morning reading Maureen's musings on yesterday's hearings with Gen. Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker. Pretty standard Dowd fare: a couple Shakespearean quotes pressed into service, a snippy sobriquet [dubbing Petraeus and Croker the "Surge Twins"], when suddenly came this [emphasis added]:

In the 1992 blockbuster movie "A League of Their Own," coach Jimmy Dugan, played by Tom Hanks, marvelously shouted at one of his weeping female players, "There's no crying in baseball!"

Sadly, on Monday morning, Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton (D-NY), followed by her husband and former President Bill Clinton Tuesday evening, put crying in politics.

And the press ate it up.

In fact, by Tuesday night, there were a total of 74 nationally televised media reports concerning Hillary's weepy moment (un-audited LexisNexis count), with CNN leading the way with 28, Fox News with fifteen, MSNBC and ABC News tied at eleven, NBC News with seven, and CBS News with two (all also un-audited).

Here's one of the first reports concerning the matter from the 3PM EST installment of "CNN Newsroom" Monday:

CNN’s Jack Cafferty gave another of his rantings against the war in Iraq and the Bush administration on Monday’s "The Situation Room." Cafferty, channeling Ramsey Clark, called the war in Iraq "an unprovoked act of naked aggression," and charged that the issues of establishing a Palestinian state and the brokering peace between the Israelis and Palestinians have been "virtually ignored by the Bush administration through almost two terms."

Cafferty made this commentary on the upcoming Annapolis, Maryland peace summit eight minutes into the 4 pm Eastern hour of "The Situation Room" as part of his regular "Cafferty File" segment. In addition to the above, Cafferty speculated that the reason that the summit was occurring at this time was due to President Bush rushing to secure a legacy.

If the "peace" movement holds a protest and no one in the press covers it, does it still exist? If Americans are sick of the war, they’re also sick of the "anti-war." Even the media have grown anti-war-weary. Rallies on October 27 drew only perfunctory news mentions.

The peaceniks have now become a bipartisan political problem, now that the Democrats who control Congress haven’t dared to placate the radicals by cutting off money for the troops. Cindy Sheehan is threatening to run against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. But suddenly – surprise, surprise – the media aren’t interested in Sheehan’s new crusade. Crusades only have a point when it’s an anti-Republican point. Camping out against Bush during his Texas vacation was news, fun news, important news. But running against Speaker Pelosi is not news. It’s a sign your fifteen minutes of fame are all used up.

Matt Lauer's Friday morning interview with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice ended badly. It wasn't that Rice brought bad answers to the interview. It wasn't that Lauer mocked or insulted Rice. It was that Lauer elevated a tired publicity stunt from the radical leftists at Code Pink to something approaching "Newsworthy" status (video available here):

LAUER: Let me end on just a different subject. On Wednesday you were set to appear before the House Foreign Relations Committee, and a protestor walked right up to your face, Madam Secretary, and said, with red paint on her hands and said, quote, "the blood of millions of Iraqis is on your hands." She was taken out of the room. Not on a policy level, on a personal level, what was your response to that moment? Were you angered? Were you upset? Were you frazzled? How did you respond to it?

News item: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, right, is confronted by CodePink member Desiree Sairooz, her hands painted red, as she arrives to testify on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2007, before the House Foreign Relations Committee

Iraqi ethnic cleansing, a "positive thing"? That's what Barack Obama seemed to say on this morning's "Today." The Dem presidential contender spoke with substitute co-anchor David Gregory on the heels of Meredith Vieira's ill-tempered interview of Condoleezza Rice.

View video here.

Warning to Bush administration officials: when being interviewed by Meredith Vieira, be prepared to make your point in 7-10 seconds, or risk being rudely caught off by the "Today" co-anchor.

Twice in the course of her interview of Condoleezza Rice this morning, Vieira distemperately interrupted just seconds after the Secretary of State began responding to her host's question.

View video here.

At the risk of giving third-rate left-wing comedian Kathy Griffin more than her due of publicity, I thought I'd pass along something I saw over at Brutally Honest. The one-time 'The View' co-host prospect making light of award winners who thank Jesus or thank God for their accomplishment at the podium:

Here's an excerpt from a September 9 blog entry titled "Kathy Griffin speaks to Jesus" (emphasis mine):

Well... sort of:

When I saw the New York Times headline "As Her Star Wanes, Rice Tries to Reshape Legacy," I really wasn't prepared for the amount of vitriol about to be heaped on the current Secretary of State.

In the end, I was sorry I even looked.

Helene Cooper's piece on Saturday began by addressing a May 25 article in the Stanford Daily, the newspaper of Stanford University, which discussed the possibility that Condoleezza Rice could return to the highly-regarded institution when President Bush's second term is over in January 2009.

Rather than citing one word from the article, Cooper instead shared reader reactions to it (emphasis added throughout):

American foolish enough to read anything by the clearly anti-Bush McClatchy news service were treated to an astoundingly disgraceful Independence Day gift Wednesday with an article that blamed all the problems in Gaza on – wait for it – the White House (h/t Dan Gainor).

In this smear piece published on the occasion of our nation’s 231st birthday, the hits started right in the glorious headline: “How U.S. policy missteps led to a nasty downfall in Gaza; Plan to isolate Hamas boomeranged.”

Isn’t that special? Alas, that was only the beginning (emphasis added throughout):

On Thursday, Instapundit’s Glenn Reynolds was curious how quickly Israel would be blamed for Hamas’ activities in Gaza, with the answer expeditiously coming from the Boston Globe.

Well, CNN’s Jack Cafferty one-upped the Globe Friday by actually blaming Hamas' takeover of Gaza on – wait for it! – President George W. Bush.

Color me unsurprised.

In his normal spot on CNN’s “The Situation Room,” Cafferty exhibited some of the most extraordinary Bush Derangement Syndrome yet as he blamed every problem in the Middle East on the current White House (video available here):

On Tuesday's edition of The View on ABC, comedienne Kathy Griffin really seemed to be auditioning for the Rosie O'Donnell Chair in Conservative-Bashing. ABC's Barbara Walters began by deploring how two new Hillary biographies are "both nasty," spurring Griffin to accuse the authors of "good, old-fashioned, garden variety sexism." She also accused men of "taking down" vice-presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro in 1984, growled about "women eating their own" over an anti-Hillary letter in Newsweek, and said Condoleezza Rice is "not a pro-woman woman" because she "follows everything white men say....Any African American woman who is a Republican does not understand that she's not a part of their agenda. Wake up!" Walters told Griffin she was "so bigoted." Joy Behar cracked that Margaret Thatcher was a "woman with a penis." Only token non-liberal Elisabeth Hasselbeck insisted that Hillary ought to endure scrutiny like any other presidential candidate.

XM Radio announced today that radio shock jocks Opie & Anthony will be suspended for 30 days. The news release excerpted below makes a nondescript reference to a crude May 9 radio bit with a homeless man in which said man suggested he'd like to rape Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Here's an excerpt:

XM Radio deplored the comments aired on "The Opie & Anthony Show" last week. At the time, the company strongly expressed its views to Opie and Anthony, and they issued an immediate apology.

Comments made by Opie and Anthony on yesterday's broadcast put into question whether they appreciate the seriousness of the matter. The management of XM Radio decided to suspend Opie and Anthony to make clear that our on-air talent must take seriously the responsibility that creative freedom requires of them.

Patrick Ishmael of NewsBuckit notices that XM didn't find the rape references worthy of discipline but rather that the shock jocks may "appreciate the seriousness of the matter." Ishmael also points out CBS Radio plans to keep airing O&A, even though it quickly canned Imus shortly after MSNBC killed his simulcast: