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Carl Bernstein claimed that because he's Jewish, he could accuse "Jewish" neo-cons of talking George W. Bush into starting an "insane" war against Iraq. Joe Scarborough wasn't so sure. Jewish neo-cons? The single most salient statement from the pre-war period was that by CIA Director George Tenet, who personally told President Bush that Saddam Hussein's possession of WMDs was a "slam dunk." So which temple does Tenet attend? What? He's Greek Orthodox? Never mind. Joe Scarborough offered a strong rebuttal to Bernstein's allegations. View the video here.

As we take time on July 4th to celebrate the liberty we cherish as American, it's important to recognize the critical role a free press plays in surfacing the truth "we the people" need to exercise our civic duty. All politicians promise transparency but the lure of retaining power is more likely to produce fog and spin than clarity and truth. A competent, assertive, and impartial press is as important today as it has been at any point in our history. To acknowledge the 40th anniversary of Watergate break-in and the critical role that the journalists Bob Woodward and Carl...

"Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein now claim, in a Washington Post piece, that President Nixon was “far worse than we thought,” and accuse him of conducting five “wars”: against the anti-war movement, on the media, against the Democrats... The facts of Watergate have been wildly exaggerated. Neither in financing techniques nor in the gamesmanship with the other side was the Republican campaign of 1972 particularly unusual. And it was puritanical compared with what appears to have been the outright theft of the 1960 election for Kennedy over Nixon by Chicago’s Mayor Daley and Lyndon Johnson."

The MSM has been too soft on Republicans, too uncritical of Boehner & Co. The press needs to start reporting that the Republican plan for the economy would be a "disaster." Oh, and for good measure, Americans are racist. They don't care about the unemployed because they wrongly assume a disproportionate number of them are black and Hispanic. Yeah, that's the ticket . . . according to Carl Bernstein on Morning Joe today. View video here.

Just a minor historical footnote, but arguably an interesting one . . . A man whose Watergate reporting made his career and led to Richard Nixon's downfall has declared that Pres. Gerald Ford did the right thing in pardoning Nixon. Carl Bernstein made the--to me at least--surprising statement on today's Morning Joe, in the course of a discussion of Jeff Greenfield's new book about various what-ifs in history. View video here.

Paging Dr. Ron Reagan, Jr. . . . On Morning Joe today, Carl Bernstein insisted Sarah Palin was "ignorant," but couldn't remember why. When pressed, he claimed she didn't know where Russia was. Oops. Bernstein began by denouncing Palin as a "demagogue." When Joe Scarborough asked him why he had written a column branding her as "ignorant" the day after McCain announced her as his running mate, Bernstein simply couldn't remember. At a loss for words, Carl claimed "she didn't know where the hell" Russia was on a map. Watch the video after the jump and note Mike Barnicle's mortified...

oh, the great wizard of smart Carl Bernstein on Morning Joe with his version of Palin Derangement Syndrome

Generations past and present of the Washington Post heaped abuse on Sarah Palin today. Appearing on Morning Joe, Carl Bernstein called Palin "ignorant," a "demagogue" and a "flake." Current WaPo editorialist Jonathan Capehart chimed in to second Bernstein's emotion "100%." Pat Buchanan stepped in to explain Palin's appeal. View video here.

Publisher Peter Osnos, who admits to personally working with former Bush White House press secretary Scott McClellan on his new book, What Happened, began his career as an assistant to I.F. Stone, the pro-communist "journalist" named as a Soviet agent of influence who was the uncle of Weather Underground communist terrorist Kathy Boudin. But the connections don't end there. Boudin's son Chesa was raised by Barack Obama associates Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, who were Boudin's comrades in the communist terrorist group, after Kathy Boudin went to prison for her involvement in an armed robbery and assault that took the...

Carl Bernstein isn't just, on the basis of his Watergate-busting fame, a liberal icon. He's also a certified Hillary Clinton expert, having devoted years to researching and writing a definitive biography of her, A Woman in Charge. So his comments tonight on Hillary's graceless reaction to her stunning defeat at the hands of Barack Obama carry special weight, and are likely to reverberate through Dem circles. Here's Bernstein's brutal take, appearing on CNN . CARL BERNSTEIN: One of the worst nights of Hillary Clinton's life. She had a chance at the end of the evening to be magnanimous, to say...

Hillary Clinton is once again facing questions about inappropriate campaign contributions.  Anyone with knowledge of recent history is not shocked.  The Clinton’s have a long history of questionable campaign fundraising. Many, however, will once again try to paint this history as “old news” and as irrelevant to the current campaign.  But this pattern of behavior calls into question both her judgment and ethics and is directly relevant to her campaign for president.Carl Bernstein’s recent sympathetic Hillary biography gives some insight into how this pattern developed.  According to Bernstein, when her future husband Bill was running for Congress in 1974 he...

Some people would later say that Vince Foster – tall, with impeccable manners and a formal mien – worshipped Hillary Clinton from the start, or that he had been awed by her from the time they met, or that he had never met a woman like her who was so whip-smart and almost sassy. What is unquestionable is that he and Hillary grew incredibly close. For the next 20 years the relationship would confound Foster’s wife (but not Bill Clinton), their colleagues at the Rose law firm in Little Rock, Arkansas, and the White House, and women who had known...

FROM CARL BERNSTEIN TO THE BROADDRICK RAPE: Connecting the DotsHILLARY CALLS NEW BOOKS 'CASH FOR REHASH.' (NOT SO FAST, MISSUS CLINTON.) by Mia T 6/04/2007 "There's not a sex act mentioned in the book. What is important is Hillary savaging the women." (Carl Bernstein)     Howard Wolfson doth protest too little. Yawn in tow--or is it a smirk?--the clinton flack is making the rounds trying to convince us that the two new hillary books about to hit the stores, "A Woman in Charge," by Carl Bernstein of 'Woodward and'/Watergate fame, and "Her Way," by former New York Times reporter...

If George W. Bush had gone to law school and later flunked the bar exam, you can imagine that fact would have become a virtual part of his name in the MSM, as in "George Bush, who failed the bar exam, today criticized a law that . . ." But it came as news to me when Carl Bernstein mentioned on this morning's "Today" that Hillary flunked the Washington, DC bar exam back in the '70s. OK, I'm not the most knowledegable guy, and the fact of Hillary's failure is not news -- after years of hiding the embarrassment, she...

<p>Famed Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein has been given access to a trove of papers amassed by Hillary Rodham Clinton's best friend, which his publisher says will reveal a number of "discrepancies" in the New York presidential hopeful's official story.</p> <p>"Bernstein reaches conclusions that stand in opposition to what Sen. Clinton has said in the past and has written in the past," said Paul Bogaards, a spokesman for Knopf, which will publish Bernstein's book June 19.</p>

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Former Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein, who with Bob Woodward helped expose the Watergate scandal, has spent eight years researching the life of Hillary Rodham Clinton and will publish a 640-page biography of her in June, the publisher said on Monday. The book, to be published by Alfred A. Knopf, is called "A Woman in Charge: the Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton" and will have a first printing of 350,000 copies in the United States, a Knopf spokesman said. He added that the size of the first printing was very high indicating that Knopf expected the...

Ephron threw this tidbit out about the first gate, Watergate, in her post: "Bob is not a liar. This isn’t to say that he hasn’t told a lie or two in the course of his life (there was a big whopper during the Deep Throat saga)." Ephron was once married to Woodward's Watergate reporting partner Carl Bernstein, so she may have good reason to know something here.

It is the ultimate Washington story, told by the ultimate Washington chronicler. But in Washington and just about everywhere else, sales of "The Secret Man," Bob Woodward's story of the source known as Deep Throat, have been underwhelming. At Politics and Prose, a well-known independent bookstore in Washington, sales were "not very good, compared to expectations," said Mark LaFramboise, who ordered 400 copies of the book for the store. As of last week, Politics and Prose had sold "60-something," he said. "I expected it to be a blockbuster," he said. "I was wrong." At Prairie Lights Books in Iowa City,...

...[N]ews organizations are trying to outwit a new generation of prosecutors and protect reporters and sources in what they believe to be an increasingly antagonistic environment. In some instances, news executives are issuing guidelines to educate and retrain their staffs about taking precautions to protect their notes and other source materials from being sought as evidence in legal cases. Some are also looking at technological fixes like heightened encryption and e-mail messages that expire after a period of time.... Several news organizations had already begun clamping down on the use of anonymous sources and tightening the rules for when they...

I hope Mark Felt and his family get the big payoff they want, but they've already hurt their chances by ignoring his famous advice as Deep Throat. They didn't follow the money. They didn't appreciate how seriously we journalists take our ethical standards. We are bound by the sacred vow we make to our sources: if the information you give us turns out to be profitable, we will keep the money. Mr. Felt's family tried profiting from his revelation, but the news cartel held firm. People and Vanity Fair both rejected the family's overtures and held to their policy of...