The ladies of "The View" tackled the U.S. attorney firing controversy with more false information, comparisons to the mob, and once again Rosie O’Donnell called for impeachment. Rosie reported her take of how the attorney firings went down.

O’DONNELL: Okay, Republican officials who supposedly called these judges that were fired and said, are you going to prosecute this Democratic, and they said, I can't talk about that because I'm actually a judge, and it's illegal. And they said "click," and they got fired.

HASSELBECK: Yes.

O’DONNELL: Now what is really scary, are the ones who they called and said yeah, sure I will. And they're still on the bench. That’s even more frightening.

"View" co-host Rosie O’Donnell displayed her disdain for opposing "views" when she shut off the show’s only non-liberal, Elisabeth Hasselbeck. Rory Kennedy appeared on the March 20 edition to promote her film for HBO, "Ghosts of Abu Ghraib."

Hasselbeck gently asked what our government should do to extract vital information from captured terrorists. Rosie jumped in and asserted "before you answer that" then proceeded to ask an unrelated question regarding a general’s transfer from Guantanamo Bay to Abu Ghraib. Elisabeth responded by noting that detainees at Guantanamo are allowed to pray five times a day, and are well fed.

At that point the "Queen of Nice" cut her off, stating that Elisabeth "can’t just blather on" her "opinion" and she needed to ask a question. Obviously offended, Elisabeth stated that she did ask a question when Rosie interrupted with her own question. Rosie said it was because Hasselbeck dared to imply that Abu Ghraib was a result of a few bad apples and not condoned by the government. Those beliefs are not allowed in Rosie’s world. The transcript of the exchange is below.

Video clip (1:40): Real (2.8 MB) or Windows (3.2 MB) plus MP3 (500 KB)

Viewers tuning into this morning's Today show for their 4th year anniversary coverage the Iraq war were assaulted with doom and gloom from the news team at Today beginning with its host Matt Lauer who opened the show asking: "Is the war worth it?" At the top of the show Lauer teased Today's look back on the war this way: 

Lauer: "Good morning, Iraq: Four years later. On this date in 2003, the start of Shock and Awe. Then the fall of Saddam but was it Mission Accomplished?"

George W. Bush: "Major combat operations in Iraq have ended."

Lauer: "As the war enters its fifth year America is shell-shocked, the casualties staggering, the price tag in the hundreds of billions. Is the war worth it? And is there still a chance for victory? A look back and a look forward today, Monday, March 19th, 2007."

HBO’s Bill Maher threw quite a Bush bash on the March 9 installment of “Real Time.”

Not only did he stock his panel exclusively with well-known critics of the Administration like Roseanne Barr, the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank, and former Special Assistant to the President David Kuo who attained notoriety by writing the book “Tempting Faith” after leaving the White House.

Maher also began the program after his opening monologue by interviewing a retired Army major general that had just written a scathing op-ed about America’s top officers published in the New York Times Tuesday. This made him the perfect guest to start such a hate-filled program (video available here courtesy of our friend Ms Underestimated).

In fact, it was quite clear why Major General Paul D. Eaton (Ret.) was present when Maher, after some brief niceties, began the interview:

As I discussed here, yesterday's clash between Hillary and Barack Obama was perhaps the most bitter and open infighting between Dem presidential candidates in many an election cycle. Particularly given that it was comments by David Geffen quoted in a column by the New York Times' own Maureen Dowd that touched off the fracas, you would have thought the Times would have gone out of it way to highlight the intra-Dem battle. So . . . how did the New York Times portray the matter in its headline this morning? In Both Parties, 2008 Politeness Falls to Infighting.

That's right, this isn't a problem unique to Dems. "Both parties" have suffered a failure of "politeness." Now it's true that over the last couple days, John McCain has taken verbal shots at Vice-President Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, and also criticized the Bush administration on the environment. But those were substantive critiques of policy. In contrast, Geffen's comments, with which Obama pointedly chose not to disassociate himself, could not have been more personal, calling the Clinton couple liars and Bill "reckless."

The Times furthered the moral equivalency with this helpful chart, documenting the barbs aimed by the respective Dems and Republicans.

How can Nancy Pelosi tell she's lost the Plane-Gate argument? When even MSNBC brands it "Air Pelosi." Check the screencap.

But Pelosi has apparently decided to go down fighting. She's now playing the gender card, and for good measure has thrown in a soupçon of Rumsfeld-phobia. MSNBC just aired a clip of Speaker Pelosi making the following remarks on the issue of her request to the Pentagon for a large plane to transport her home:

"I don't even know the numbers of the planes. So this is something that is really very strange. That the Department of Defense, the Pentagon, which I have been a constant critic of the war in Iraq, and where I understand Mr. Rumsfeld still has a desk, even though he's no longer the Secretary, has decided that they would go public about a conversation on an issue that applied to the previous Speaker. Now, as a woman, as a woman Speaker of the House, I don't want any less opportunity than male speakers have had when they have served here."

View the video of one angry Pelosi here.

"We have met the enemy and he is us." - Pogo comic strip, 1971

Nicholas Kristof has apparently embraced the Walt Kelly view of America. When it comes to the war in Iraq, the only evildoers the New York Times columnist seems to see are Americans.

At the foot of his pay-to-play of column of January 23rd, Kristof invited readers to submit their literary analogies for President Bush and Iraq. In today's columnn, Kristof mentions having received over 400 reader responses.

And which entry does Kristof choose to feature at the column's beginning and that might fairly be taken as his unofficial winner? One that analogizes the various actors in the play to characters from Harry Potter. I set forth below the reader's analogies, followed by a description of the character as culled from their Wikipedia entries.

As reported by NewsBusters, Keith Olbermann during Monday’s “Countdown” declared Insight magazine as part of a quartet of the Worst Persons in the World. Its crime? Publishing an article suggesting that Sen. Barack Obama (D-Illinois) attended a Muslim madrassa as a child.

In reality, KO should point that castigating finger at himself given that he hasn’t always been so critical of the conservative magazine. In fact, in the eight other times that a LexisNexis search identified KO referenced Insight, he quoted from the publication quite warmly as if it was a credible source (h/t NewsBusters member “mlong”).

What did all those eight instances have in common? Well, if you guessed that the magazine was criticizing President Bush or a member of his administration, you’d be correct.  

Hysterically, the most egregious example of Olby’s hypocrisy on this issue was him actually using an Insight article to declare Karl Rove “The Worst Person in the World” on September 6, 2006:

EDITOR'S NOTE: This is a corrected version of the original item. Imus's guest was Mike Barnicle. The original item, displayed briefly, incorrectly identified Imus's guest as Chris Matthews. My apologies to Chris Matthews and our readers.

H/t to reader PJG.

Does it get any more foul than this? During the 8 AM ET hour of Don Imus's show this morning he and Mike Barnicle fantasized about how various Republicans would react to being hung on the gallows.

Note: this item was prepared from the closed-caption transcript. It will be reviewed and corrected as appropriate in the course of the morning. Video: Real (3MB) or Windows (3.5MB) Plus MP3 (555KB)

Not surprisingly, all three morning shows featured the Bob Woodward interview with recently deceased former President Gerald Ford, in which Ford criticized the Bush administration for its decision to go to war with Iraq. Good Morning America and the Today show were the most eager to showcase Ford’s critique of the administration, broadcasting full reports and featuring audio clips from the interview during the 7am half hour, while CBS’ Early Show relegated the story to a brief anchor-read at 7:35 am.

On ABC, anchor Robin Roberts, substitute co-host George Stephanopoulos, and reporter Claire Shipman seemed disappointed that the former president had not come forward publicly with his criticism prior to his death, saying that it could have made a difference in the U.S.’s decision to go to war:

To a lover in the thrall of blissful delirium, there is nothing that doesn't relate to his beloved. Frank Rich is the morose mirror image. Not a leaf falls but that it reminds him of Iraq and the perfidy of the Bush administration. The ostensible topic of Rich's sub-req NY Times  column of this morning was Time magazine's solipsistic choice of "you" as person of the year. What this has to do with Iraq might not be apparent to you. But you're not Frank Rich.

Let's see how Rich managed to make the connection with some annotated excerpts:

• "Like Time today, Life in the late 1960s was a middle-of-the-road publishing fixture sent into an identity crisis by the cultural revolution that coincided with a calamitous war."

As bad as Vietnam was for us, it was much worse for the millions of Vietnamese and Cambodians who were killed by the dictators who took over once we pulled out.

As 2006 draws to a close, the MRC has once again ranked the most egregiously biased quotes from members of the media. So, who made the cut as "the best of the worst?" Click here to find out.

Christmas may be arriving soon, but NPR chose the week before December 25 as the appropriate time to broadcast an atheist message of holiday intolerance. Showing that radio can still compete with television for extreme examples of bias, the taxpayer-supported NPR also wondered if ailing Senator Tim Johnson’s family "has the right" to ruin the Democratic majority.

The media’s flirtation with Senator Barack Obama doesn’t seem to have lessened their love affair with Hillary Clinton. "Today" show co-host Meredith Vieira told Mrs. Clinton that it’s now "more imperative that we need a village to raise healthy, secure children." The New York Senator also received a very warm welcome on "The View."

This week, Dan Rather appeared on CNN’s "Reliable Source" and claimed that Saddam Hussein was more honest than President Bush. Rather also reiterated his attacks on the Fox News Channel.

As reported by NewsBusters, actor Sean Penn made some fairly ridiculous statements about President Bush at an awards ceremony on Monday. On Wednesday’s “Hannity & Colmes,” the panel discussed these inanities, with radio host Michael Reagan sitting in for the vacationing Sean. Colmes set up the discussion, “So is Hollywood out of touch with mainstream America or are they saying exactly what Americans want to hear?” Fox News’s Greg Gutfeld was first up (video available here):

No, actually, I wouldn't even argue with any of Sean Penn's assertions. I have no problems with what he says. What I love about him, though, is that when he does these speeches or when he's on Larry King, he keeps talking about censorship and how people are out to shut him up. But somehow he never shuts up. He just keeps talking. So every time he ever says that, he undermines his own argument. And that's why I love him.

I agree. Alas, Colmes didn’t, and proceeded to bang the same absurd drum he had the evening before with the MRC’s Brent Bozell: