In the wake of Saturday's Senate vote to move forward with debate on controversial healthcare reform legislation, CNN's John King may have posed one of the best questions asked on any of Sunday's political talk shows:

To get Senator [Mary] Landrieu's vote, just to proceed, just to go across the starting line, language was inserted in the bill that gives her state up to $300 million. To get Senator [Ben] Nelson's vote, [Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid] agreed to drop a request that you take away the antitrust exemptions for insurance companies...[Is healthcare reform] important enough to buy votes?

This marvelous question was asked on Sunday's "State of the Union." In attendance were Democrat Senators Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Michael Bennet of Colorado, and Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire.

Better still, King pointed a finger at President Obama who promised during the campaign "to change the way Washington works" (video embedded below the fold with partial transcript, h/t Breitbart TV):

A "new consensus" has emerged on the success of the economic stimulus package, according to a New York Times headline. In touting the supposed success of the legislation, and hinting at support for another round of spending, the Times neglected to mention the widespread fraud that characterizes the administration's attempt at shoring up the economy.

As reported by P.J. Gladnick on Saturday, the Times made sure to attribute its claims to "dispassionate analysts," and asserted that the stimulus is "helping an economy in free fall a year ago to grow again and shed fewer jobs than it otherwise would." Gladnick thoroughly debunked this claim, and others, in his NB post.

In a further show of bias, the Times article makes no mention of the 76,779 jobs that were not actually "saved or created" by the package, but were added to the number touted by the administration (interactive map embedded below the fold - h/t Examiner's Freddoso, Spiering, and Hemingway). Given that this number is roughly 12 percent of the 640,000 jobs the administration claims to have "saved or created," it might merit a mention in the Times's story.

An unsigned CNN.com article on Friday noted that the Senate Ethics Committee had reproved Senator Roland Burris “for actions and statements reflecting unfavorably upon the Senate,” but did not directly mention the Illinois senator’s affiliation with the Democratic Party. The article did mention that Burris was “the only African-American U.S. senator.”

The first two paragraphs from the CNN Political Ticker story excerpted the letter that the Senate committee sent to the successor to President Obama: “The Senate Ethics Committee issued a letter Friday admonishing embattled Illinois Sen. Roland Burris ‘for actions and statements reflecting unfavorably upon the Senate’ in connection with his controversial appointment by former Gov. Rod Blagojevich. ‘While the committee did not find that the evidence before it supported any actionable violations of law, senators must meet a much higher standard of conduct,’ the letter stated.”

Two CNN programs ran news briefs on a new study on movie popcorn from the Center for Science in the Public Interest, but omitted its left-wing affiliation. Anchor John Roberts mentioned the group by name on Wednesday’s CNN Tonight, but didn’t mention its liberal politics. His colleague Kiran Chetry didn’t even mention CSPI by name during her brief on the study on Thursday’s American Morning.

Roberts read his news brief on the CSPI study 12 minutes into the 7 pm Eastern hour: “[W]e all know how expensive popcorn and soda is at the movie theater, but you may not know the cost to your waistline. The Center for Science in the Public Interest tonight says it has the answer. The group analyzed how much fat and calories are in a medium sized popcorn from Regal, which is the country’s largest movie chain.” He continued that “an astonishing 1,160 calories and 60 grams of fat- that is three days worth. Add a soda to the mix, and the combination is equal to eating three McDonald’s quarter-pounders plus 12 pats of butter. The calorie and fat count was far more than claimed by the movie theater company.”

CNN's Rick Sanchez hosted a forum of 'average joes' yesterday in a sort of focus group on Sarah Palin. CNN did not feel, however, that it needed to invite any Palin supporters. Despite claims that the group accurately represented American opinion, its responses demonstrated a total disconnect from actual public sentiment.

Sanchez, shown right in a file photo, asked the group to inform viewers of their political and party affiliations, concluding that there was "a pretty good cross-section" of Americans participating. He then asked about Palin. None of the viewers said they would vote for her in a presidential run, and none said they plan on purchasing her new book (video and transcript below the fold - h/t Townhall).

A screening of the show's guests would hardly be a surprise given Sanchez's history of playing fast and loose with the facts when conservatives are involved. He touted one of the quotes falsely attributed to Rush Limbaugh, and later apologized for his mistake, adding to his long list of retractions. He has blamed the murder of a police officer on "right wing radio" and berated Fox News for alleged bias while ignoring CNN's.

Sanchez's coverage of Palin herself has not exactly been stellar. He suggested after she stepped down as governor that she might be pregnant.

CNN senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin fretted in a column in the November 23, 2009 edition of The New Yorker that “abortion, as the academics like to say, is being marginalized,” and even turned his ire on some in his left-wing camp, including President Obama. He accused “many modern pro-choice Democrats,” including the President, of ceding “the moral high ground” to pro-lifers.

Toobin began his “Not Covered” column by outlining the history of abortion, particularly in the U.S.: “Abortion is almost as old as childbirth. There has always been a need for some women to end their pregnancies. In modern times, the law’s attitude toward that need has varied....Throughout this long legal history, the one constant has been that women have continued to have abortions.” The analyst continued with his lament that the legalized murder of an unborn child isn’t more accepted, given the “constant” he had outlined: “It might be assumed that such a common procedure would be included in a nation’s plan to protect the health of its citizens. In fact, the story of abortion during the past decade has been its separation from other medical services available to women. Abortion, as the academics like to say, is being marginalized.”

NBC's Matt Lauer, on Tuesday's Today show, actually asked Lou Dobbs, formerly of CNN, if he and the network parted ways because he was "too conservative" and if CNN was okay with Dobbs' push for immigration reform when he was attacking George W. Bush but wasn't happy when Dobbs started slamming the Obama administration on the issue, as he queried the former CNN host, "You got much less kickback from CNN than when you started to speak out about the policies of Barack Obama. So, was this an issue that CNN wants to appear neutral but maintain a more liberal stance?" [MP3 audio available here]

For his part Dobbs claimed the home of the very liberal Rick Sanchez "made it very clear, they wanted the network to go middle of the road and to be very neutral."

The following is the full transcript of the entire segment as it was aired on the November 17, Today show:

Naomi Wolf on Monday accused former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin of being part of a "cabal" involving George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Karl Rove.

The feminist author and political consultant made this accusation on CNN's "Larry King Live."

Fortunately, former Bush adviser Mary Matalin was there to contest Wolf's absurdities:

[T]his is why people think liberals are such fringies. I mean you -- you run around saying that she's such a dope, but you were all duped by the dope. That's what you've said about George Bush, too.

In the end, the paranoia on display, as well as the unchecked hatred for Palin, was nothing less than remarkable -- but Matalin was there to bring some sanity to the discussion (video embedded below the fold with transcript, h/t Story Balloon):

On Monday’s American Morning, CNN’s Jim Acosta rehashed a three-month-old report from the left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center about the apparent rise in militia activity in the U.S., and extensively featured a militia from Michigan whose members purportedly “could not specify which of their constitutional rights are being peeled away.”

Acosta didn’t use any specific ideological labels to classify the militias during his report, which aired just before the bottom of the 7 am Eastern hour, but it was clear that the featured militia, the Southeast Michigan Volunteer Militia, held right-of-center views, as its members expressed concern about gun rights, anti-Obama sentiment, and even flew the yellow Gadsden flag (with its “Don’t Tread on Me” slogan) featured at Tea Party protests. The Gadsden flag showed up in many of the clips of the militia during the CNN correspondent’s report, which was the first in a series titled “Patriots or Extremists.” The Tea Party tie was reenforced with a shot of a truck of one of the militia members, which had a sticker of the famous “Obama as the Joker” image on it.

Chris Ariens at TV Newser reports that CNN reporter Emily Chang was detained for two hours today in Shanghai for holding up a T-shirt depicting Barack Obama wearing a Red Army uniform. "Chang bought the T-shirt at a basement souvenir shop in Beijing and brought it with her to Shanghai as she covers President Obama's visit to the city."

The front of the t-shirt says "Serve the People" in Chinese. On the back, it reads "Oba Mao" in English. The shirts have been seen in Chinese shops for months, but were "banned" ahead of Obama's trip.

When Chang held up the shirt up for a live shot outside a Shanghai metro stop, she was approached by two security guards. She recounted the scene in her In The Field blog:

Bad move? Maybe. But it ended up being great television.

A seventeen year veteran of CNN claimed Sunday that Lou Dobbs' surprising exit from the network was because "his opinions are out of lockstep with the rest of the mainstream news media."

Discussing the issue with Howard Kurtz on CNN's "Reliable Sources," Chris Plante, a former CNN correspondent and current talk radio host, said Dobbs, as "the last conservative voice on the channel," no longer fit in.

"They had Glenn Beck, he's gone. They had [Dobbs], now he's gone," claimed Plante.

When Plante said CNN hosts Campbell Brown, Anderson Cooper, and Larry King weren't "completely neutral," Kurtz asked, "Are you suggesting that those hosts lean to the left?"

Plante marvelously responded, "Yes, I am" (oftentimes contentious video embedded below the fold with full transcript, file photo): 

In case you missed the media coverage of the Fort Hood shooting for the last several days, let's sum up the main theme:  Nidal Malik Hasan is not a terrorist.

CNN continued that theme early Thursday morning with an interview from a profiler who claims that Hasan is nothing more than a lonely, wifeless, psychopath in the midst of a midlife crisis. 

Criminologist Pat Brown states that:

"He was simply a lone guy who had issues, problems, psychopathic behaviors that escalated to the point where he wanted to get back at society, and he took it out on his workmates like most of them do."

What does Brown base that assessment on?  During a correspondence with her (outlined in full at the end of this post), CNN's profiler of choice had very little to say about the radical Muslim ideology in the Hasan case.  You'll be amazed at what follows:

Lou Dobbs left CNN after years of tensions between him and the network's brass, who consistently objected to his outspoken, often controversial reports. But the issues that seem to have annoyed CNN execs most were ones on which Dobbs took a conservative stance.

The New York Times reported Wednesday that CNN President Jonathan Klein offered Dobbs an ultimatum a few months ago: "Mr. Dobbs could vent his opinions on radio and anchor an objective newscast on television, or he could leave CNN." Klein reportedly complained about Dobbs's reporting on the Birther movement over the summer, and his outspoken opposition to illegal immigration.

According to the New York Post, one "TV insider" said Dobbs was "polluting the CNN brand" of purported political objectivity. Klein issued a statement saying Dobbs had decided to "carry the banner of advocacy journalism elsewhere."

Just over a week after using the term “far right” three times in a row in one night, CNN’s Larry King used the term “right wing” three times during an interview of Al Gore on his program on Thursday. King first questioned Gore about “the rise of the right wing” and “right wing radio” in the context of the health care debate, and later asked the former vice president, “ Is the right wing bigger than its bite?”

The CNN host lead his hour-long interview with Gore with a ringing endorsement of the Democrat’s new book: “We are so honored to welcome back Al Gore to the show, the former vice president of the United States and the Nobel Peace Prize laureate and the best-selling author, all in one person. His new book is ‘Our Choice.’ There you see it. It’s a plan to solve the climate crisis, and it is brilliantly put together.”

Thirteen minutes into the 9 pm Eastern hour, King raised the issue of the Tea Parties with Gore: “What do you make of the rise of the right wing, these rallies and dealing with health care- we’ll move to health care in a minute. Right-wing radio- they take you on pretty good.” As you might expect the “green godfather” (as Katie Couric put it) hinted the anti-ObamaCare activists were being unreasonable: “Well yeah, it’s not entirely new in American politics. We have had a strain like this in our politics for a long time, and there are extreme voices all along the ideological spectrum. And we just have to focus on building the health and strength of our democracy and hope that the voices of reason and deliberation will prevail.”

At the top of Thursday’s CBS Early Show, co-host Maggie Rodriguez declared: “...former Miss California, Carrie Prejean, almost walks off Larry King Live, saying his questions were inappropriate.” The headline on screen read: “Prejean Pouts.”

Co-host Russ Mitchell later reported in a news brief: “Prejean nearly walked out on CNN interviewer Larry King last night. Prejean had answered questions about a sex tape she made as a teenager....She then refused several times to discuss a settlement she reached with the Miss USA Pageant, but King persisted.” Mitchell failed to provide the context that Prejean had already completed a 30-minute interview with King and was strangly brought back for the final few minutes of the show.

Later in his report, Mitchell explained: “King tried to go to a caller from Detroit, but Prejean removed her mic and prepared to leave. She then changed her mind and completed the interview. She never did answer Mr. King’s question.” Co-host Harry Smith later noted: “And the fact is – is the reason she was pulling her mic is because she said ahead of time she wasn’t going to take questions from callers.”

Who says Larry King only throws softballs to guests? If you're a conservative, the CNN host has a wicked fastball.

Former Miss California Carrie Prejean appeared on the Nov. 11 "Larry King Live" to promote her new book, "Still Standing." Tension ran deep, with Prejean accusing the host of being "inappropriate" and at one point, taking off her microphone and threatening to walk-off the set.

King also blindsided Prejean, who famously spoke out against same-sex marriage in the Miss USA pageant last April, with a caller who asked her, "I'm a gay man and I love pageants. I'm sure that you, Carrie, have got great gay friends that helped you possibly win. What would you give them as advice if they wanted to get married?"

As noted earlier today (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), yesterday's resignation from CNN by Lou Dobbs was his second during a storied career there. The first was at least partially driven by clear tensions between Dobbs and CNN head Rick Kaplan, a longtime friend of former president Bill Clinton who arrived at the network in 1997.

That Kaplan was driven to protect Clinton, and to risk journalistic integrity while doing so, is virtually beyond dispute. In 1997, as the Wall Street Journal's Dorothy Rabinowitz noted in a 1999 op-ed whose primary purpose was to comment the significance of "the demolition of CNN and Time's story charging that U.S. forces used the lethal gas sarin to attack American defectors in Laos," U.S. News reported that Kaplan "issued a warning to CNN journalists to limit the use of words like 'scandal' in relation to stories on the president's fund-raising ventures."

So you can imagine how beside himself Kaplan must have been when Dobbs, then the host of a business and finance show, went after the Chinese nuclear espionage story in 1999 while his other CNN colleagues and the Big 3 networks were attempting to downplay and ignore it. Brent Baker's CyberAlert from March 12 of that year has the details:

Newsweek senior editor Jerry Adler on Thursday posted a bizarre poem on the publication’s website, mocking Lou Dobbs for leaving CNN and insinuating that the cable anchor might be crazy: "So wily Lou has picked the locks That kept him in his padded box And tiptoed off, in just his socks." [Punctuation original to the poem.]

Adler, whose poem reads like a cross between Dr. Seuss and Calvin Trillin, also trashed Dobbs and his viewers for opposing illegal immigration: "A network just for frat-boy jocks? Where aliens are put in stocks And viewers pelt them with big rocks Before each half-time show?" [Emphasis added.] He concluded by speculating on Dobbs’ future: "Could it be UPN, or Cox? They’d have to open up Fort Knox We know Lou’s crazy, like a Fox."

In addition to composing poetry, Adler also famously made this pronouncement about the environment on December 31, 1990: "It's a morbid observation, but if everyone on Earth just stopped breathing for an hour, the greenhouse effect would no longer be a problem."

While Lou Dobbs has always been an independent populist with some conservative bearings on certain issues -- illegal immigration chief among them -- conservatives should heed the old Reagan maxim when it comes to the former CNNer's populist conservatism: Trust, but verify.

After all, back in December 2006, fresh after the election which saw the return of Democratic control to the House of Representatives, Dobbs voiced support for Democratic universal health care proposals on a CNN special entitled "War on the Middle Class":

[T]his country has a responsibility to all the people in this room and Americans, all but the very poor and the very rich, are the ones being hammered because there is no program for the middle-class.

Julia Seymour documented the story at the time over at the Business & Media Institute Web site. You can find the full story below the page break:

Lou Dobbs has resigned from CNN, and his final show aired last night. The departure is reportedly on amicable terms.

That said, this is a good time to recall that Dobbs and his employer were at very visible loggerheads a decade ago. In fact, yesterday's move by Dobbs is not his first resignation from the network. Here is Brent Baker's June 9, 1999 CyberAlert item describing what happened:

Lou Dobbs gone from CNN. Forced out by CNN President Rick Kaplan, or just frustrated by him? In a surprise announcement at the end of Tuesday’s The World Today, anchor Jim Moret informed viewers:

"And finally tonight, farewell to a colleague. Lou Dobbs, President of CNNfn and anchor of Moneyline, is resigning to launch a new Internet venture. Dobbs said he is ‘grateful to Ted Turner and CNN News Group Chairman Tom Johnson for the opportunity to have helped build CNN and cnn.com into a first-class television news and interactive institution.’ Lou Dobbs had been with CNN since its inception 19 years ago. He will start up space.com, a Web site for news, entertainment and educational content about space."

No mention of Kaplan and an on-air dispute the two had a couple of weeks ago about whether to carry live a Clinton speech may explain why. As Clay Waters of Bridge News first informed me, the May 25 Page Six column in the New York Post revealed: