Inside Politics by the numbers for July 18, 2005

In my last post, I relayed how Inside Politics (IP) had not picked up on a new poll showing decreasing support for Osama bin Laden in the Arab world and a concurrent increase of belief in democratic reform. Well, IP again ignored that story today, fixating again on a Karl Rove angle to the Valerie Plame leak investigation. Senior political analyst Bill Schneider, however, did have time to rattle off negative poll results for President Bush hot off the presses from the Washington Post dealing with, you guessed it, the Karl Rove story. Of the 11 segments aired on IP, only 3 had nothing to do with Rove: a Bruce Morton piece on state dinners under President Bush versus other recent presidents; the "political bytes" segment about 2008 hopefuls campaigning at the National Governor's Association meeting in Des Moines, Iowa, over the weekend; and "blog reporter" Jacki Schechner on a blogger who was fired after her boss read her blog. [click title bar for full post] Aside from Rove, the other big story for IP was Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter making known he would like to see another "moderate" nominated to fill Justice O'Connor's seat on the Court, a talking point among liberal journalists you can probably expect to overtake the Karl Rove coverage should President Bush name his pick to the Court later this week.