As media digest the recent John McCain sex scandal allegations by the New York Times, one side of the story seems destined to get ignored: one of the four co-authors took money from a liberal activist group to fund a hit piece about Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Kent.) in 2006.

Before becoming an investigative reporter for the Times, Pulitzer Prize winner Marilyn W. Thompson was editor of the Lexington Herald-Leader in Kentucky.

As Howard Kurtz reported in October 2006, Thompson was in the middle of what one might call a pay for play hit piece against that state's leading Republican figure (emphasis added):

Washington Post "Reliable Source" gossips Amy Argetsinger and Roxanne Roberts chronicled the jokes at Thursday night’s Washington Press Club Foundation dinner, including the ones at the expense of the liberal media:

Sen. Mitch McConnell dryly scores with his line about the Dem race between "a New York senator who was born in Illinois, and an Illinois senator who was apparently born in a manger." Sen. John Cornyn makes his point more sharply, noting that the New York Times declined to attend this year. "Their table didn't go to waste. They just donated it to MoveOn.org at a discount." An "ohhhhhh" fills the room, followed by a lone hiss...

For once, Nancy Pelosi gets into the sassy, hazing spirit of these things. "I knew I had arrived in Washington when Helen Thomas played me in a skit at Gridiron. Remember that?" she coos. "I do." She blows a kiss to the veteran correspondent -- but zings: "That was Italian." (Get it? Kiss of death!)

As NewsBusters reported, CNN aired an advertisement on Monday for its "Nancy Grace" program on Headline News in which a picture of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kent.) was highlighted in a promo about this fall's "incredible crime stories".

Amazingly, the esteemed Senator from Kentucky was sandwiched between shots of convicted Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick, OJ Simpson, and other high-profile crime figures of 2007.

NewsBusters has been informed that after a number of CNN producers were sent our article on this subject, a senior CNN official contacted McConnell's office to apologize for the incident.

Apparently, the ad is being immediately pulled, and a full internal investigation is being launched concerning the matter.

What's going on at CNN?

On Monday, the "most trusted name in news" ran an advertisement for its Headline News program "Nancy Grace" dealing with "incredible crime stories" this fall.

In the fast-moving montage, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's (R-Kent.) picture was spliced in between what appears to be convicted dog abuser Michael Vick and missing Bolingbrook, Illinois, resident Stacy Peterson. A picture of her husband Drew, who is implicated in her disappearance, followed, with a final shot of OJ Simpson.

Here's the transcript of this highly curious ad (video available here):

Despite, or perhaps because of the S-CHIP stalemate in Washington, liberal media outlets including the New York Times, Think Progress and now the Courier Journal in Louisville, Kentucky continue to somewhat sinisterly flame one aspect of the S-CHIP story at the urging of Democrat Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) staffer Matt Miller, even though the narrative they've woven isn't at all supported by the facts.

I've obtained a copy of one of allegedly many emails Miller has used to try and gin up buzz around a false story targeted at the Republican Leader. And as you'll see below, it seems the liberal media likes its gin.

From: Matthew Miller ******@dscc.org
Sent: Tuesday, October 16, 2007 4:11 PM
To: Matthew Miller
Subject: KY Station Asks: Did McConnell mislead public?

In case you missed it, the Louisville Courier-Journal reported this morning that Senator Mitch McConnell’s office played a key role in spreading false information about a 12-year old boy who receives health insurance from the SCHIP program. Now Kentucky television station WHAS is reporting that McConnell appears to have misled the public when he denied any involvement in the story on Friday. McConnell is now caught between his public statement denying any role in spreading the story, and his spokesman’s admission that he did.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi may have said she saw evidence of climate change in a recent trip to Greenland, but leave it to CNN to press her and other Democrats from the left for not doing enough to stop greenhouse gas emissions "in their own backyard." Both "American Morning" and "The Situation Room" on Tuesday featured CNN congressional correspondent Andrea Koppel's segment on how the heating and cooling power supplied to the U.S. Capitol building comes from the Capitol Power Plant, which is half-fueled by coal, and emits "tens of thousands of tons of greenhouse gases into the air." The blame for these emissions is placed on the politics of Senators Robert Byrd and Mitch McConnell, both of whom come from "two of the biggest coal-producing states."

Koppel interviewed two people for her segment, both of whom have left-wing affiliations. The first was Pelosi's chief administrative officer for the House, Dan Beard, who talked about the massive environmental advantage of switching to compact fluorescent bulbs. The second, Frank O'Donnell of the group Clean Air Watch, was given two sound bites in the segment. O'Donnell compared Senators Byrd and McConnell to a famous television mobster. "It's as if Tony Soprano had a seat in the Senate. They're saying this plant must stay alive. It must keep burning coal, even though it is causing pollution and global warming."

Alright, class. Imagine you're a reporter in the mainstream media and you want to write a formulaic profile of a conservative legislator but don't know how.

It's easy if you follow the simple steps I've written down below. For our purposes today, I'm illustrating from the March 6 Politico profile of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.)

First, start with some praise about said leader's legislative prowess: