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Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz presented quite a paradox in a Charlie Gibson profile Monday. The retiring ABC World News anchor said that "it’s time to move on" since objectivity is "less of a marketable commodity." But Kurtz also underlined how Gibson dared to keep airing live coverage of Ted Kennedy’s funeral until they were able to broadcast the reading of Ted Kennedy’s letter to Pope Benedict. These passages came late in the article: Gibson worries whether broadcast networks will be able to support sizable editorial staffs in an era of declining audiences, when cable news channels are louder...

Inuit communities need funds to adapt to climate change in the Arctic, including measures to build communal deep freezers to store game, an Inuit leader said on Friday. The Inuit, the indigenous people of Greenland, Canada, Alaska and Russia, have traditionally hunted for Arctic species from seal to polar bear, whale to caribou. The Inuit Circumpolar Council's (ICC) Violet Ford says she sees climate changes "on a daily basis". Ms Ford, who was born and raised in the Inuit community of Makkovik, says more funds are needed for adaptation and response to climate change in the Arctic. "That should also...

Michelle Obama was even more fascinating than her presidential husband in 2009, according to Barbara Walters. Walters named the first lady the year's most fascinating person, in her one-hour special "Barbara Walters' 10 Most Fascinating People," which aired last night on ABC.

Rep. Grayson tells Cheney to 'STFU' By Eric Zimmermann - 12/09/09 06:02 PM ET Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) has done it again. Appearing on MSNBC's "Hardball" Wednesday night, the Florida Democrats used a colorful acronym to respond to Dick Cheney's criticisms of President Obama. "You know, on the internet there's an acronym that's used to apply to situations like this. It's called 'STFU.' I don't think I can say that on the air, but I think you know what that means," Grayson said. That acronym is short for "Shut the f**k up." Last night, Cheney had lashed out at President...

Children are uniquely malleable beings, readily convinced of magically colorful tales – Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy are the first that come to mind. This innocence is beautiful, but it is a quality that can easily fall victim to radically foreign ideas if taught consistently and pervasively at an early age. One need only look at the birth of fascism or socialism to see a recipe for how radical ideas become ubiquitous among a nation’s youth. Enter Howard Zinn – an author, professor and American historian – who, with the help of Hollywood and the History Channel, intends to...

They shake hands with Al Gore, thank him, then cut to the top stories: "Monster snow storm paralyzing travel in more than a dozen states with blizzard like conditions"...(Video)

If you are easily offended, please don't read this.I've found the relatively new autosuggest feature on Google to be a pretty useful heuristic.  When you don't quite know what exactly you're searching for, this feature suggests phrases to complete or refine your query. It's not clear what the properties of the algorithm are that Google utilizes for this feature--i.e., how the phrases magically appear, but it's fair to say that they are correlated with the number of searches performed for the combination of words typed by users at a large scale.

Here is video of MSNBC's Mike Barnacle on Morning Joe today where he asked RNC Chairman Michael Steele, "What are you people for?", referring to what are Republicans for in terms of Health Care Reform. Steele asked Barnacle, "You People?" "I just want you to define the pronoun, baby." Barnacle said he meant, "Republicans." . . . (VIDEO)

The FBI is searching for five "missing students" from the Washington, D.C., area who may have gone overseas, according to a source familiar with the situation. Families of the missing men "raised concerns" with the FBI, which has launched an investigation into the matter, the source said. The source said agents from the FBI's Washington field office have been interviewing family members, friends and others who may know where the five students went, and how they got there. "It's a concern," the source said of the missing men. It is believed the men are Muslim. Asked whether the men may...

Headline at CBS News:Sarah Palin Almost Gets Tomato in Face, but Jeremy Olsen Has Terrible AimLede:NEW YORK (CBS) Maybe Jeremy Olson should have practiced with a target first before attempting to pelt Sarah Palin with tomatoes at a book signing in Minn. Dec. 7.The above was written at the CBS News page CRIMESIDER: The True Crime Destination From the Producers of 48 Hours MysteryThe article was posted by Carlin DeGuerin Miller.

Democrats are debating the tactic of labeling Republicans the “party of no.” Senior strategists in the party argue the label at best has outlived its usefulness, and at worst will do nothing to win new Democratic votes in the 2010 elections. “The Democrats are making an enormous mistake when they say the Republicans are the party of no,” said Paul Begala, the veteran Democratic strategist who worked in President Bill Clinton’s White House. Democrats began describing the GOP as the party of no after every House Republican voted against the $787 billion economic stimulus bill in February. The label has...

LONDON (Reuters) – Humanity faces a profound emergency and unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage our planet, a joint editorial published in newspapers in 45 countries said on Monday. The 56 newspapers said they were taking the unprecedented step of speaking with one voice to implore world leaders to "make the right choice" at U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen. "The politicians in Copenhagen have the power to shape history's judgment on this generation: one that saw a challenge and rose to it, or one so stupid that we saw a calamity coming but did not...

In the age of balloon boys and party crashers, regular people just don't know what to believe any more. Last week, I spent more than my share of hours trying to track down the truth about an incident on an AirTran flight out of Atlanta on Nov. 17. Flight 297 to Houston, with about 70 passengers onboard, departed gate C-16 at 4:43 p.m. Until something happened that caused the pilot to turn around and come back. Two and a half weeks later, the incident is in high dispute, thanks to some passengers who have spoken out on the Internet about...

Dyron HartA young African-American man from Mississippi who admitted in August to sending death threats over Facebook while posing as a white supremacist received three years of probation from a federal court judge in New Orleans on Wednesday.

This is a front page article in SportingNews.com "Since its release, Sarah Palin's book, "Going Rogue" has been somewhat picked apart for factual errors. From a sports angle, there is no factual error that will get a better laugh than this one: In her new book, "Going Rogue," former vice presidential nominee attributes a quote to UCLA basketball coaching legend John Wooden. The only problem is that he didn't say it. "Our land is everything to us...I will tell you one of the things we remember on our land. We remember our grandfathers paid for it -- with their lives."...

Having urged the president to honor his commitment to the Afghan war, we Republicans must honor our commitment to support him as he fights it. Given the public unenthusiasm for the conflict, there will be political temptations to “go rogue” on the president, if not now, then in the summer of 2010. That will be our test, for us to pass as the president has passed his. I know many Republicans and conservatives will say: “Hey – the Democrats did not give President Bush support when he most needed it.” Correct. They didn’t. And the country suffered for it. The...

Can’t stand a member of Congress and desperately want him or her out of office? There’s a blog for that. For many members, there are blogs or websites solely dedicated to making them look bad, designed to highlight all their foibles and offer news and commentary aimed at portraying them as unfavorably as possible. With names like Where’s Eric Cantor?, MyCongressmanIsNuts.com, and Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, these hater websites are proliferating on the Internet, providing aggrieved constituents and local activists with the opportunity to vent, usually anonymously, and offer an unvarnished partisan take on an incumbent’s performance. For the most part,...

From journalist Elizabeth Drew, a veteran and often sympathetic chronicler of Democratic figures, a fiery denunciation of—and warning for—the White House. In a piece in Politico on the firing of White House counsel Greg Craig, Ms. Drew reports that while the president was in Asia last week, "a critical mass of influential people who once held big hopes for his presidency began to wonder whether they had misjudged the man." They once held "an unromantically high opinion of Obama," and were key to his rise, but now they are concluding that the president isn't "the person of integrity or even...

The BBC received copies of some of the CRU emails more than a month ago, but did nothing about them, sitting on explosive evidence of fraud. The UK Daily Mail reports: .. The sequence of events strongly suggests that an insider leaked some emails to the BBC (and for all we know, others), hoping that they would be incriminating enough to intrigue anyone. When faced with a media stonewall, the insider then chose to post the complete files where they could not quickly be extinguished.

What is going on at Google? I only ask because last night when I typed “Global Warming” into Google News the top item was Christopher Booker’s superb analysis of the Climategate scandal. It’s still the most-read article of the Telegraph’s entire online operation – 430 comments and counting – yet mysteriously when you try the same search now it doesn’t even feature.

Breaking news last week featured in the Wall Street Journal and Fox News has featured the story and data released by an unknown hacker or whistleblower that appears to be obtained from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, England. There has been confirmation from Steve McIntyre, a climate scientist who is featured and attacked in the leaked information that seems to verify its authenticity. McIntyre was not one of the elite group from the CRU, but one of many scientists who has been seeking data and facts through a freedom of information request. Requests for data...

In case you have not yet heard, the scientists behind the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) have been exposed through their own email conversations. At this time, it is not known who or how the emails were obtained, though much speculation has been done. From the servers at the University of East Anglica in the UK being illegally broken into and hacked, to a whistle blower protected by UK laws as well as US laws, to an insider job, a person with legitimate access to the emails have all been discussed. More will be revealed certainly. What is known...

Senator Inhofe: Well, on this thing, it is pretty serious. And since, you know, Barabara Boxer is the Chairman and I’m the Ranking Member on Environment and Public Works, if nothing happens in the next seven days when we go back into session a week from today that would change this situation, I will call for an investigation. ‘Cause this thing is serious, you think about the literally millions of dollars that have been thrown away on some of this stuff that they came out with. Melanie Morgan: So what will you be calling for an investigation of? Senator Inhofe:...

Psalms 109:8, Anti-Obama Web Cry: 'Let His Days Be Few; and Let Another Take His Office' A nice sentiment? Maybe not. The psalm reads, "Let his days be few; and let another take his office." Presidential criticism through witty slogans is nothing new. Bumper stickers, t-shirts and hats with "1/20/09" commemorated President Bush's last day in office. But the verse immediately following the psalm referenced is a bit more ominous: "Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow." The slogan comes at a time of heightened concern about antigovernment anger. Earlier this year, the president's senior adviser, David...

A week after his notorious Playgirl shoot – the results of which are due to be exposed online this weekend – Levi Johnston's thoughts are on his 10-month-old son, Tripp. At Wednesday's GQ Men of the Year Party in New York, a fully-clothed Johnston told PEOPLE that he sees a little bit of himself in his son. "He is very funky," Johnston says. "He's got a lot of energy. He's always looking to mess things up, break things. He's crazy." Johnston, 19, says that the best thing about being a dad is "just the excitement of watching him grow up....

Texas' gay marriage ban may have banned all marriages AUSTIN — Texans: Are you really married? Maybe not. Barbara Ann Radnofsky, a Houston lawyer and Democratic candidate for attorney general, says that a 22-word clause in a 2005 constitutional amendment designed to ban gay marriages erroneously endangers the legal status of all marriages in the state. The amendment, approved by the Legislature and overwhelmingly ratified by voters, declares that "marriage in this state shall consist only of the union of one man and one woman." But the troublemaking phrase, as Radnofsky sees it, is Subsection B, which declares: "This state...

"But as I realized back in my Wasilla mayor days, life is too short to hold a grudge." By the time the reader reaches that pronouncement on page 321 of "Going Rogue," Sarah Palin has nursed enough grudges to last a lifetime. She describes the McCain campaign's chief strategist Steve Schmidt's "rotund physique" and his penchant for smoking to "keep his cognitive connections humming along." She claims that her Troopergate nemesis Hollis French earned the nickname "Gunny" after he listed himself as a Marine Corps private when he "merely attended a weeks-long military course during college." Media strategist Nicolle Wallace...

Does President Obama "uses" the military for photo-ops? President Obama will tell us his comments fit the mood of the crowd, but when I first heard Obama’s comments in South Korea stating hundreds of troops in uniform was a good photo op, my eyes rolled. Our American forces are not a political tool to be used by politicians in constant campaign mode as a photo op. Couldn’t he just thank the troops and say he was humbled by their work effort and thank them for coming out to greet him? Nope. From today’s Washington Times…

The photographer who shot the picture violated his contract by reselling them to Newsweek. That photographer, Brian Adams, could not immediately be reached, and his agent, Kelly Price, declined to comment, saying, "I keep all of my clients' business private." But a spokeswoman for Runner's World confirms that Adams's contract contained a clause stipulating that his photos of Palin would be under embargo for a period of one year following publication -- meaning until August 2010. "Runner's World did not provide Newsweek with its cover image," the spokeswoman said. "It was provided to Newsweek by the photographer's stock agency, without...

Oprah Winfrey’s interview with former vp candidate Sarah Palin scored the talk show host her highest rating in two years. Monday's episode of "The Oprah Winfrey Show" drew a 8.7 household rating and 13 share -- the best since Oprah had the entire Osmond family on the show in 2007. That means Palin also topped Oprah's heavily viewed interviews with Whitney Houston at the start of the season. Palin is making the rounds to promote her new book, "Going Rogue," which came out Tuesday. Winfrey began the interview by asking Palin if she felt snubbed at not getting an invitation...

The diaries of the journalist who helped expose the Soviet Terror Famine in the Ukraine are now on display in Cambridge. At the time of his writings he was denounced as a liar by Soviet sympathizers including Walter Duranty of the New York Times. Had he not died in suspicious circumstances he would no doubt have been pleased to see that the truth of his accounts is now accepted, although he would perhaps be disappointed to see that one of the outlets for his writing, the Guardian (then the Manchester Guardian), frequently publishes articles explicitly and implicitly supportive of totalitarian...

Today I’m off on the Eurostar to Brussels (”a carbon neutral journey” it boasts on my ticket – which rather makes me wish I were flying instead) to speak at the European Parliament on Climate Change. No, don’t worry. The Goreistas haven’t got to me. It’s a sceptics’ conference – Have Humans Changed Climate? – being staged tomorrow by Tory MEP Roger Helmer. Many of my science and eco-heroes will be there, including Patrick Moore (the co-founder of Greenpeace who subsequently bailed when the charity turned far too red), Prof Fred Singer (who’ll be talking on Can We Trust The...

Uninsured patients with traumatic injuries, such as car crashes, falls and gunshot wounds, were almost twice as likely to die in the hospital as similarly injured patients with health insurance, according to a troubling new study. The findings by Harvard University researchers surprised doctors and health experts who have believed emergency room care was equitable. "This is another drop in a sea of evidence that the uninsured fare much worse in their health in the United States," said senior author Dr. Atul Gawande, a Harvard surgeon and medical journalist. The study, appearing in the November issue of Archives of Surgery,...

"If the rest of the world were to follow the US example in their approach to fossil fuels, the oceans would not only heat up, but would probably soon begin to boil."

Left-wing media matters Cliff Kincaid, November 17, 2009 A professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Robert W. McChesney has said that “media reform” should be part of the march toward socialism in America and that capitalism has to be dismantled “brick by brick.” Van Jones, the ousted communist “Green Jobs Czar” of the Obama Administration, served with McChesney on the board of Free Press, a George Soros-funded organization, in 2007 and 2008. Despite its socialist orientation, Free Press is financially supported by extremely wealthy individuals such as George Soros, the leftist billionaire, and Marcy Carsey, one of the creators...

American squeamishness about talking about sex has helped keep common sexually transmitted infections far too common, especially among vulnerable teens, U.S. researchers reported Monday. Latest statistics on chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis show the three highly treatable infections continue to spread in the United States. "Chlamydia and gonorrhea are stable at unacceptably high levels and syphilis is resurgent after almost being eliminated," said John Douglas, director of the division of sexually transmitted diseases at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "We have among the highest rates of STDs of any developed country in the world," Douglas added in a...

ABC’s Good Morning America finally picked up on the deep bow President Obama performed for the Emperor of Japan over the weekend. Co-host Diane Sawyer ran through how other U.S. Presidents have greeted either Emperor Akhito or his father, the late Emperor Hirohito over the years — some bowing, some not. Sawyer claimed that Americans are “not trained to greet royalty” and “it’s just too confusing.” Actually, the government employs lots of experts on culture and protocol to make sure that our presidents are fully “trained” on what to do when they represent our government overseas — which is not...

Newsweek intentionally left out Obama from the list (that he would save the world.) And no surprise, 3 of the 10 are Republicans (or maybe more.)

ATLANTA — The nation's largest publisher of newspapers serving the gay and lesbian community has shut down. Laura Douglas-Brown, editor of Southern Voice newspaper in Atlanta, says she arrived at work Monday to find the locks changed and a note saying parent company Window Media LLC has closed down.

Virginia Muslims are calling on McDonnell (R) to disavow comments made by the Virginia Beach religious broadcaster last week in response to the shootings at Fort Hood, Tex., in which Robertson asserted that Islam is "not a religion" but a "violent political system" and that those who practice it should be treated like members of a communist or fascist party.

Freepers!...we're losing the image war. Photographs of the wounded at Fort Hood do not circulate among the major media. The wounded in Vietnam were commonly depicted in a way which maximized the public disgust with the war effort but the victims of jihadists are not shown in such an emotional way. The blood of civil rights demonstrators and marchers were commonly shown in the '60s and the image of the murdered and mutilated Emmett Till is a common icon to this day. But there is a lack of circulation of 9-11 pics (outside conservative media), mall shootings, Jihad victims, and...

The new focus of the investigation is a manipulated suicide for the insurance money.

The Governor just posted this to her Facebook page: "As you probably have heard, the AP snagged a copy of my memoir, Going Rogue, before its Tuesday release. And as is expected, the AP and a number of subsequent media outlets are erroneously reporting the contents of the book. Keep your powder dry, read the book, and enjoy it! Lots of great stories about my family, Alaska, and the incredible honor it was to run alongside Senator John McCain. We can’t wait to hit the road and meet so many on the book tour! See you in Michigan first... -...

Investigators are digging up a rural Missouri property looking for notes they say six children buried in glass jars documenting years of nightmarish sexual abuse allegedly at the hands of their grandfather, father and three uncles. The children reportedly wrote the notes between 1988 and 1995 because they claim they were told doing so would make their memories go away, police said. Police who are excavating the 55 acre property said they are also looking for bodies, although they would not say whether they were looking for bodies of adults or children. The five men, three of whom were lay...

Columnist Steve Chapman who bills himself as "solving the world's problems one post as at time", has written this truly ignorant article about the Islamic attack on Fort Hood. Islam and Fort Hood By Steve Chapman Conservatives have been quick to trumpet the fact that the alleged killer at Fort Hood, Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, is a Muslim--the implication being that Muslims are inherently untrustworthy, hostile to America, at odds with civilized norms of behavior or something. But if that were the case, incidents like this would be common, not rare. It would be absurd and dangerous to anathematize...

Remember how the Democrats reacted when the Bush Administration started replacing U.S. Attorneys? At least they were actually political appointees employed at the will and whim of the President.

Islam Remains Innocent thelastcrusade.org A conservative media watchdog organization says for the most part, the mainstream media networks have downplayed the Muslim connections with terrorism in the Fort Hood massacre.The Media Research Center (MRC) says that when authorities first announced the Fort Hood shooter was Major Nidal Malik Hasan, CBS and NBC purposefully avoided mentioning his name for fear of offending Muslims. The Center points out that ABC's Charles Gibson suggested Hasan was a "Muslim convert," which was not a correct statement, but adds at least Gibson was not trying to play "hide and seek" with the facts.The MRC...

Had CNN spliced footage of a sparsely-attended Capitol Hill rally to discredit the reports of large numbers of attendees to the 9/12 rally in September, conservatives would have rightly howled about media bias. What will conservatives say about Fox News splicing footage of the 9/12 rally into coverage of Michele Bachmann’s otherwise well-attended rally last week? Jon Stewart gives Fox News a well-deserved poke in the eye for fudging the footage, as well as exposing rather clearly its source:

Dan Calabrese notices a scolding tone coming from the Associated Press in reporting its latest polling. It headlines the report by noting that “a grouchy public [is] sticking with Obama,” having seen a 54% job approval rating in its survey — but some bad numbers on the issues. Does the AP report those falling levels of support as a consequence of Barack Obama doing a poor job? No, as emphases from Dan and myself show: The public grew slightly more dispirited on a range of matters over the past month, including war and the economy, continuing the slippage that has...

Here is video of Steven Crowder on with Sean Hannity last night where he talked about his "Man on the Street" video asking people who the "Vice-President" is. He also asked people who Nancy Pelosi is. Almost no one knew the answer to either question! But when he asked who "Angelina Jolie's boyfriend is," virtually everyone knew the answer - Brad Pitt. It is scary to know that these are people voting, and Barack Obama owes his Presidency in large part to these voters. It explains a great deal. . . . (VIDEO)