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Is Harry Smith sad that the Mumbai terrorists missed their intended American and British targets and hit Indians? Strange as it sounds, it's hard to interpret his remark of this morning otherwise. Smith was discussing the attacks on the Early Show with CBS terrorism expert Jere Van Dyk when he made his bizarre observation. View video here.

When Dan Rather filed suit against CBS 14 months ago -- claiming, among other things, that his former employer had commissioned a politically biased investigation into his work on a "60 Minutes" segment about President Bush's National Guard service -- the network predicted the quick and favorable dismissal of the case, which it derided as "old news." So far, Mr. Rather has spent more than $2 million of his own money on the suit. And according to documents filed recently in court, he may be getting something for his money. Using tools unavailable to him as a reporter — including...

After spending much of the spring and summer hyping the dire consequences of rising gas prices, CBS on Thursday night decided the plummeting cost of gas at the pump is really bad news. Noting that “crude settled at about $58 a barrel today, that's about $90 less than it was in July,” fill-in CBS Evening News anchor Harry Smith warned “that comes as a mixed blessing.” Reporter Mark Strassmann found an ecstatic man paying less than $2.00 a gallon, but Strassmann spoiled the mood: “Low gas prices are also bad news and the lower prices go, the worse the news...

American firm found to be illegally transporting tech trash to China, transforming a town in southern China into a toxic wasteland There's little doubt that China is heavily polluted. This was showcased at the Beijing Olympics, which were held under constant fear of smog. The country is also the world's largest CO2 emitter. China and the U.S. have long played the blame game over who is to blame for the other's pollution. NASA studies have shown that as much as 15 percent of the U.S. air pollution is simply smog blown over from China. The Chinese, however, say that it’s...

Okay you'll have to excuse the lateness in following up on what I heard. I (temporarily) live and work in a different time zone than most of you (US CST + 9) and I wasn't able to log on yesterday. Anyway we're listening to AFN radio after the night shift Friday morning, which equated to approximately 5:24pm EST. On the second of the two stations available, we were treated to an audio broadcast the CBS Evening News w/ Kat-ie Couric. After the final human interest segment she signs off to the contributing reporter with, "Enjoy your first post-election weekend, I...

To answer the question of my headline, no CBS isn't joking. CBS is actually pretending that the Old Media must be "won over" by a President Obama. It makes one wonder just how much more the press can be in love with The One? As multiple studies have shown, the Old Media has been far more in Obama’s corner than not yet now CBS wants to pretend they are skeptical of Obama? Now CBS wants to act as if they will be tough on him unless he appeases them? I know I said CBS was serious with this report, but...

At the top of Friday’s CBS Early Show, co-host Russ Mitchell reported on location from Athens, Greece as part of the show’s ‘Destination Unknown’ series and managed to squeeze in this observation: "...coming here, also, meeting people on the street, Europeans, they're absolutely giddy about the election of Barack Obama. They're actually coming up to us and congratulating us, which is interesting. So Europe is reacting in that way." Later in the 8:30AM half hour, Mitchell returned to that observation: "As I said earlier in the broadcast, you get the sense being over here in Europe that the attitudes of...

At the end of Wednesday’s CBS Early Show, an emotional Harry Smith declared: "I don't know how else to say this -- I grew up in a household that was not racially neutral. I grew up in a household where racial epithets were used commonly and with vigor. To see the difference in this country, in a country that I grew up in, so many people have said this is not something they thought they would ever see in their lifetime, and I wept tears of joy last night."

NEW YORK - A New York City judge says he wants to see documents that passed between a law firm and a panel CBS hired to investigate a Dan Rather story on President Bush. Judicial Hearing Officer Ira Gammerman told attorney David Versfelt on Wednesday to let him examine the papers so he can decide whether Rather's lawyers may see them. Versfelt's law firm was hired to advise the panel. Versfelt says the papers are protected by attorney-client privilege.

At the top of Thursday’s CBS Early Show, co-host Julie Chen praised Barack Obama’s election as the first African-American president but lamented the passage of California’s Proposition 8, preventing gay marriage: "One barrier falls, another returns. Married gays in legal limbo protest through the night as California voters ban same-sex unions." At the top of the 8AM hour, correspondent John Blackstone reported: "In disappointment, supporters of same-sex marriage gathered in Los Angeles last night, after the hard-fought campaign over California's Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage, they were on the losing side, but not ready to give up." Blackstone went...

Network coverage of Palin has moved beyond criticism to outright ridicule. Strikingly, all three networks have repeatedly aired clips of Palin being parodied by a comedy show, NBC’s Saturday Night Live, leading to concerns that many Americans are confusing the real Palin with SNL’s figure of fun. When have comic impressions of a political figure ever qualified as hard news? CMI reviewed network news coverage of Palin for the two weeks beginning September 29 and ending October 12, the period before and after the October 2 vice-presidential debate. We found that ABC, NBC and CBS have been stridently critical of...

Mary Mapes is in gloat over-drive. Dan Rather's erstwhile producer, the woman behind Memogate, is beside herself with joy at what she sees as the impending death of the conservative blogosphere. It's her expectation that Barack Obama will win the presidency that has Mapes so hopeful. Annotated excerpts from her HuffPo column, The Monster is Dying [emphasis added]: * This whole thing is starting to feel a lot like the climactic death scene at the end of a 1950s monster movie. * Palin actually resembles that old monster movie staple -- the beautiful-but-bookish brunette working as a lab assistant for...

Wednesday’s CBS Early Show continued pressing the theme that the election is over as co-host Maggie Rodriguez declared: "Countdown to election day. The swing state showdown continues as Obama appears to open up an advantage in early voting." Co-host Harry Smith cited polls with wide margins to further shovel dirt on the McCain campaign: "New polls out with just 13 days to go until election day. A poll by NBC News and the Wall Street Journal gives Barack Obama a ten-point lead over John McCain, that's 52% to 42%. A poll by Reuters, C-Span, and Zogby shows the same...

This new CBS News/New York Times poll, which is being touted with a 14-POINT LEAD for Obama, up from THIREE POINTS in the same poll a week ago . . . IS A FRAUD! A peek into the "internals" of the Poll (that is - where the numbers come from) shows this fraud: Total Respondents 1070 UNWEIGHTED WEIGHTED Registered Voters 972 902 Democrats 371 338 Republicans 295 263 Independents 306 301 *Effective Likely Voters 699 *Every registered voter is included in the likely voter model, and is assigned a probability of voting, which is used to calculate the likely voter...

CBS News apparently had an October surprise of its own for President Bush. The network, already reeling from accusations of bias over anchorman Dan Rather's use of bogus memos to challenge Mr. Bush's Texas Air National Guard record, acknowledged yesterday in a statement that it had planned to air a story critical of the Bush administration's handling of Iraqi munitions Sunday on "60 Minutes," two days before the presidential election.

CBS News' : (NASHVILLE, TENN.) - After most of the previous 12 months covering Barack Obama's campaign for the presidency, it was interesting, instructive and, well, relaxing to follow John McCain for the last few days. The differences between the two are striking. Obama is the big time orator, McCain is the guy who struggles with a teleprompter or even note cards strategically placed nearby. Obama's crowds are larger, more enthusiastic. McCain's events are smaller, but to my eye, better choreographed. And now with the addition of Sarah Palin to some of his events, McCain can boast of crowds that...

It started out 16 months ago as a mortgage crisis, and then slowly evolved into a credit crisis. Now it's something entirely different and much more serious.

ERS is still wondering, if its illegal to bring in “looted” items from Iraq, and someone has even been convicted of a crime for doing so -- why is it O-K for Lara Logan to be displaying a few of those same kind of items framed on her office walls at CBS News and have public media stories done about them without any US Customs people paying attention?. We don’t know yet for sure, but we’ll stay on the story until we find out!

Sarah Palin Was Annoyed During Interviews With Katie Couric By Noel Sheppard Created 2008-10-04 16:06 Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin admitted Friday that she was annoyed during her interviews with CBS's Katie Couric because she felt the "Evening News" anchor missed a lot of opportunities to discuss issues "that Americans want to hear about." Having taken a lot of criticism from Obama-loving media members about her performance during these interviews, Palin met with Fox News's Carl Cameron Friday to clear the air about why she appeared a tad ill at ease with Couric (video embedded right, relevant section at 2:25):...

<p>CBS news hottie Lara Logan could be in hot water for swiping souvenirs from the wreckage of bombed-out Baghdad.</p> <p>In a video profile of the "60 Minutes" star called "Lara Logan's Spoils of War," mementos from Iraq and Afghanistan are shown in her Washington office.</p>