On Friday's Special Report with Bret Baier, FNC correspondent Jennifer Griffin informed viewers that the Obama administration has once again snubbed the British government, as the administration transferred a group of detainees from Guantanamo Bay to the British protectorate of Bermuda without first consulting the British government as protocol requires. Substitute anchor Chris Wallace raised the issue:

Let's talk about the Bermuda part of the story because Bermuda is a British protectorate. We supposedly have a special relationship with the U.K., but we didn't talk to them, we didn't inform them about our deal to put the Uighurs there.

Griffin described the administration's faux pas as "stunning":

When it was announced that Hillary Clinton was going to give her first Sunday interview since becoming Barack Obama's Secretary of State to her husband's former advisor George Stephanopoulos, nobody envisioned a hard-hitting exchange.

However, as he tossed the softest of softballs at his guest, the "This Week" host mysteriously avoided asking any questions about Clinton's future political ambitions or the possibility that Obama, by involving Hillary and Bill in his administration, has effectively marginalized them.

As former Clinton advisor Dick Morris wrote two weeks ago in a piece entitled "The Incredible Shrinking Clintons":

Yesterday fundraiser Norman Hsu was convicted of of illegally funneling tens of thousands of dollars to Democratic candidates, including Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.  The Wall Street Journal reported:

On Tuesday, a jury convicted Mr. Hsu of four counts of campaign-finance fraud after about 2½ hours of deliberations. Each count carries up to five years in prison.

The latest example of political corruption was met by much of the mainstream media with a collective yawn.  CNN mentioned it only twice.  The Situation Room featured CNN anchor T.J. Holmes briefly touching on the story:

Also, a name you might remember making some news again. He gave money to the presidential campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. And he was already found guilty for mail and wire fraud. Well, today, Norman Hsu was convicted of violating campaign finance laws. He was accused of getting donations from people, including from celebrities, who funneled money that exceeded campaign finance rules to Democratic campaigns. His sentencing is scheduled for August.

 On Lou Dobbs Tonight, the host noted:

A top fund-raiser for the Democrats, Norman Hsu, today, convicted of corruption. A New York jury found Hsu guilty of breaking laws that restrict the amount of money an individual or group can donate to a political party. Hsu raised more than $800,000 for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, money that she later returned.

As Geoffrey Dickens reported earlier, Chris Matthews attacked Goveror Sarah Palin for hiring a ghostwriter for her upcoming book deal. In like fashion, Mark Silva of the Chicago Tribune's The Swamp Blog has also gotten into Laugh-at-Palin's-book mode and you can bet that this will be the scoff du jour among the left-media. But, the thing that proves the Old Media's hypocrisy and partisanship is this "collaborator" angle. The media are going nuts that Palin is working with what is essentially a ghostwriter -- though an upfront one, not a hidden one -- and acting as if this is somehow unusual. But it simply is not.

Few politicians that have books published under their name ever themselves put pen to paper. Politicians are generally not writers and it is completely common that they hire actual writers to do the heavy lifting of composing their book. But here is both Matthews and Silva acting as if Palin is the only one ever to do it.

The Obama White House revised up 2009's budget deficit projections to $1.8 trillion Monday, and the press blamed it on George W. Bush.

Without considering how the current budget passed last year with virtually no Republican support, and that all spending associated with this record-breaking deficit was either approved by Senator Obama or signed into law by President Obama, news outlets echoed what Office of Management and Budget director Peter Orszag ascribed as the culprit in his blog: 

The deficits in these years, now projected to be 12.9 percent and 8.5 percent of GDP, respectively, are driven in large part by the economic crisis inherited by this Administration.

The New York Times accepted this assessment without question in its article on the subject Tuesday:

This morning's remarks by Barack Obama on the latest unemployment figures included the usual self congratulations we've come to expect from The One.  CBS News quotes him as saying:

Such hard-working Americans are why I ran for President. They're the reason we've been working swiftly and aggressively across all fronts to turn this economy around; to jumpstart spending and hiring and create jobs where we can with steps like the Recovery Act. Because of this plan, cops are still on the beat and teachers are still in the classroom; shovels are breaking ground and cranes dot the sky; and new life has been breathed into private companies like Sharon Arnold's.

The woman to whom Obama referred appeared with him this morning and POLITICO describes her as "Sharon Arnold, a small biz owner from Illinois."

In a brief presentation viewable at C-SPAN's Web site, Arnold explained she owns a small landscaping business that has benefited from government contracts.  Last year, however, she "had to lay everyone off, including myself."  All of her employees went on unemployment.  But now, things are just so much better.  Under Obama, stimulus money is flowing back to Illinois and she's been able to hire back 90 percent of her employees.

In a piece that could've been crafted by Hillary Clinton's PR shop, NBC's Andrea Mitchell, on Monday's "Today" show, gushed on and on about the Secretary of State's new "role of a lifetime," as a "a foreign policy superstar," and cheered Clinton has the "highest approval ratings of any time in her career."

Mitchell's theme throughout her story was that the "anger of the primaries," between Clinton and Barack Obama was long gone and that in her role of Secretary of State she has proven to be a "key asset to Team Obama," as "Today" co-anchor Matt Lauer observed in the intro. There wasn't a hint of skepticism or negative note in the story as Mitchell threw in soundbites from John Podesta, Joe Klein and presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin who chimed: "She seems to be really enjoying herself, as does he."

The following is a complete transcript of the segment as it was aired on the May 4, "Today" show:

Very frightening, I think, what the media was able to get away with this go round.

So said Alaska Governor Sarah Palin at the beginning of John Ziegler's must-see documentary "Media Malpractice: How Obama Got Elected and Palin Was Targeted."

After a nicely spliced introduction that included many of the disgraceful moments NewsBusters reported throughout the campaign, just before the opening credits rolled, Palin ominously stated, "This is for the sake of our democracy that there is fairness in this other branch of government if you will called media."

So true, and yet what Ziegler masterfully demonstrated to his viewers was that democracy and fairness were not on the minds of most press members when the campaign began in 2007.

Here’s a quick informal poll:  Who has heard news of Russia’s recent troop buildup in the South Ossetia region of Georgia?

Most of our readers would immediately think of the Russian invasion of that region last summer, during the presidential contest, but the Russians are arguably saber rattling again with a fresh buildup of boots on-the-ground ahead of planned NATO exercises.

Last August, the media coverage immediately took the angle of breathless anticipation on how each presidential candidate would react to such a situation.  John McCain’s position was easily established from his record over many years in the Senate.  Then-Senator Obama’s position was much more difficult to ascertain – but the media gave him ample time to figure it out, helping the candidate defer those questions to the September 26 debate.  In fact, a good example of such activism was shown in the Washington Post’s Jim Hoagland, who in his August 31 op-ed insisted:

New twist on the old media double standard: Strong pro-life women shouldn’t accept far-flung speaking engagements. They should stay home (presumably barefoot and pregnant, too.) Strong pro-choice women, however, are welcome to “champion women’s rights,” wherever and whenever they please.

Alaska Governor Sarah Palin recently gave a speech at a pro-life dinner in Indiana on April 16 and the media condemned her for not staying home and governing her state. But when U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently spoke to a Planned Parenthood group she was lauded as “championing women’s rights.”

ABC’s “Good Morning America” covered Palin’s speech and the “controversy” that ensued, stating that Alaska lawmakers, failing to mention they were mostly Democrats, are “criticizing Palin for her out of state travel.”  Instead of focusing on Palin’s main pro-life points, GMA spent 50 seconds of the 64 second segment keyed in on her admission that she understands women who entertain the thought of abortion.

For almost a week, Americans have been told by liberal bloggers, Keith Olbermann, Rick Sanchez, and David Shuster that conservative talkers are lying about the Obama administration's plans to enact stricter gun laws, and that this is what caused Richard Poplawski to kill three police officers in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, last Saturday.

You know who's been telling the American people Obama wants to take away guns? Members of his own administration, that's who.

Such was reported Wednesday evening by CNN's Bill Schneider in a piece addressing a new poll that found only 39 percent of Americans support stricter gun laws compared to 46 percent who want no change to current legislation (video and transcript below the fold, h/t Glenn Reynolds):

The Washington Post published an extensive investigative piece about Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on Friday which was a collaboration with the far-left media outlet ProPublica (h/t Carter Wood).

As NewsBusters executive editor Matt Sheffield and I reported last September, ProPublica was founded by Herb and Marion Sandler, the California billionaires that have contributed millions to liberal causes and entities such as MoveOn.org and the Clinton front-group Center for American Progress.

Readers might recall the Sandlers being lampooned by "Saturday Night Live" last October for having a hand in the financial crisis. NBC later caved to pressure from the couple and edited out any reference to them in the video of the skit posted at the network's website (Pat Dollard still has the full video here).  

In October 2007, shortly after the Sandlers announced their new media venture, Slate's Jack Shafer expressed concern:

During a segment on Friday’s Campbell Brown: No Bias, No Bull program, CNN tried to perpetuate left-wing stereotypes about gun owners, and sent mixed messages about whether or not President Obama and his administration is pushing for gun control. Correspondent Sean Callebs interviewed two Texas professionals who owned guns and concluded, “A nurse, an attorney -- not the usual portrait of Second Amendment diehards.” After asking a gun store owner if he was “profiting on this fear” of new gun control measures, Callebs expounded on the concerns of gun owners: “In fact, it may not be rational at all. It might even be paranoid. But one thing is certain. Many gun owners believe this president is somehow out to curb their rights and they’re stocking up just in case.” [audio available here]

Both Callebs and CNN senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin tried to assure their viewers that gun control was “way off the agenda right now” of the Obama administration, despite the fact that a graphic on the news crawl stated plainly that President Obama “wants to make expired Assault Weapons Ban permanent.”

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was honored Saturday night in Houston by America’s leading provider of abortions, with an award named for a woman who believed the population of inferior races should be trimmed, and Texas newspapers kept their headlines bland. "Clinton honored for support of women’s rights," said the Dallas Morning News over an AP dispatch. "Clinton champions women’s rights worldwide," cooed the Houston Chronicle. AP’s Juan Lozano offered few highlights (or lowlights) of the speech, but it was a bit shocking to see Mrs. Clinton equate anti-abortion advocacy and anti-democratic politics:

HOUSTON — Helping women’s reproductive and health rights flourish is an important part of U.S. efforts to develop democracy around the world and defeat extremism, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said during a speech Friday.

"A society that denies and demeans women’s rights and roles is a society that is more likely to engage in behavior that is negative, anti-democratic and leads to violence and extremism," Clinton said at Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s national conference in Houston.

Thus far, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has made two diplomatic blunders during her visit to Mexico that the U.S. Old Media are shockingly uninterested in highlighting. One was a policy blunder and the other a cultural/religious one.

Clinton's first mistake was in imagining she is still a Senator that can make pronouncements on pending laws and policy plans instead of a mere envoy of the president, a mouth piece that hasn't the same freedom to invent policy prescriptions and laws that a Senator does. Last week, Clinton told Mexican officials that "we" -- as in the U.S. government -- are considering re-upping the so-called assault rifle ban because Mexico's drug violence is "our" fault.

Hillary Clinton smiles next to an image of the Virgin of Guadaloupe during a visit at the Virgin's Basilica in Mexico City, Thursday, March 26, 2009. (AP Photo/Daniel Aguilar)

While reporting on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s trip to Mexico to address the escalating drug war, on Thursday’s CBS Early Show, correspondent Lara Logan gave a glowing review of Clinton’s job performance so far: "Well, she seems very much at ease. That's one of the things that struck myself and other journalists dealing with her in her new role. She has almost come into her own. She's very open, very direct, taking a lot of time. One particularly important thing to note is that she takes a lot of time to meet with local women and young people, disadvantaged groups...she wants to hear from ordinary people. She finds it very useful to hear from the man on the street."

Logan went on to explain how much effort Clinton puts in to meeting with the "ordinary people": "...that's not a small achievement when you consider the time pressures on trips like these. They're very fast-paced and there's a lot of pressure. And so the fact that Hillary makes this special effort to talk to people is actually noted and appreciated wherever she goes."

NBC's Andrea Mitchell, in a taped interview from Mexico with Hillary Clinton on Thursday's "Today" show, partially blamed the Bush administration for Mexico's current drug cartel violence as she charged that "90 percent of the guns used by gangs," were available because the Bush White House and Congress let the assault weapons ban lapse. Mitchell even went as far to push the Secretary of State to "challenge the gun lobby," and "reinstitute," the ban.

ANDREA MITCHELL: And 90 percent of the guns used by the gangs come from the U.S., including the powerful assault weapons that were banned until Congress and the Bush White House let the ban expire.

MITCHELL TO HILLARY CLINTON: Why not take that on? It would be tough but why doesn't the administration challenge the gun lobby and take on the assault weapons ban and reinstitute it?

CLINTON: I'm, I'm not gonna, you know sugar coat it. It's a very heavy lift. I think that's a mistake. I think these assault weapons, these military style weapons don't belong on any one's street.

The following is a complete transcript of the segment as it was aired on the March 26, "Today" show:

"I am told he gets $7 million for his life's accomplishments in book form. So, the book is five pages long?"

Few are surprised by the left-leaning 'reporting' by MSNBC hosts, of which Keith Olbermann gets the 'best' award for, but what's the point of bashing Bush about his book, now?

To display what mean-spirited looks like? To improve ratings? (Certainly hasn't worked up to now). To solidfy support for Obama? Whatever the reason, it certainly is not good or authentic journalism.

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