Note: This serves to at least partially answer ABC's David Wright's idiotic question.

Bob Bennett is a man of integrity, and the Democratic half of the political Bennett Brothers. He appeared last night on Mark Levin's nationally syndicated radio show to debunk the media myth built-up around Arizona Senator John McCain's role in the Keating Five mess circa the late 1980s and early 1990s.

(Brother Bill served as Secretary of President Ronald Reagan's Department of Education and Director of President George H.W. Bush's Office of National Drug Control Policy, and is now a nationally syndicated radio host in his own right, of "Bill Bennett's Morning in America.")

Bob Bennett is an attorney, and was at the time of the Keating Five scandal hired by the Senate Ethics Committee as Special Counsel to lead the investigation into what had happened. After over a year of exhaustive examination, Bennett recommended that Sen. McCain (and Sen. John Glenn of Ohio) be exonerated of all charges having to do with the Keating scandal. The ethics committee, which was majority Democratic, rejected Bennett's recommendation.

From the Washington Post's The Trail (by Michael Abramowitz), we have the following:

Update: The techincal error is resolved. Please, enjoy. Thank you very much.

Tuesday's Presidential debate is now looming in our headlights. It will be moderated by the very liberal Tom Brokaw of the very liberal NBC.

The Media Research Center, Newsbusters.org's parent company, wanted to take this opportunity to remind one and all why Brokaw's colleague, the very liberal Chris Matthews, will not be moderating the debate. And why he was removed as co-anchor of the very liberal MSNBC's 2008 campaign coverage.

Why he was ever ensconsed in that lofty journalistic position remains light years beyond us.

So we now humbly present to you an MRC Cinematic Production entitled "Chris Matthews: Building the Thrill."

We sincerely hope you enjoy.

The ultimate objective in journalism is to deliver fresh information to the audience, to break heretofore unshattered stories.

Last night, ABC's Terry Moran did exactly that.

To get there, you must first wade through an extraordinary amount of Moran-Goo, as he slathers it liberally all over his reporting of the official nomination vote. But this is hardly groundbreaking. What comes next is.

The excited media throngs have already long hailed Illinois Senator Barack Obama for being the first bi-racial candidate ever to secure a major Party's nomination for President.

Moran yesterday added to the historic aura surrounding the Senator's parents.

For Matthews, A Major Award

Well that's a tad over the top, is it not?

A newly formed conglomeration of thirty women calling themselves The New Agenda (TNA) have convened to "pool (their) talents and leverage already established 'riends of the family' organizations to launch a grass roots and grass tops effort to register women voters, organize a national 'get out the vote' effort around women's issues," so says Amy Siskind, a member speaking for the new gaggle.

But that's not all they intend to do. They want to rid the world of misogynistic males, and MSNBC's Chris Matthews is first on their hit parade.

From their declaration:

The networks suggest Obama is driving the narrative, but it's the liberal press themselves doing the driving for Obama

(Editor's Note: This essay originally appeared today in Human Events.)

Just Another Clown Delivering the News

The Big Three networks just foisted a week long Obamathon upon the American people, a political, "journalistic" perversion of Jerry Lewis's annual televised good deed.

Mr. Lewis raises money for a very worthy cause. CBS' Katie Couric, NBC's Brian Williams and ABC's Charlie Gibson attempted to raise the Presidential credibility of an inexperienced candidate by dutifully following Illinois Senator Barack Obama to the Middle East and Europe for six days and five nights of wall-to-wall slavish and adoring reporting.

This was an unprecedented media extravaganza. Never before have all three evening news anchors been drawn out of their chairs and all over the world together and on behalf of a candidate. Their coverage of Sen. Obama was as glitteringly positive as it was all-encompassing: the primary season without the Clinton distraction.

By week's end, the voters back here Stateside could well have forgotten that Senator Obama has an opponent.

The media real estate rule: location, location, location

Liberal Scandals Strategically Located

Last Sunday evening the world was again made privy to the inner workings of the Reverend Jesse Jackson's mind, thanks to a moment of hot microphone pre-interview candor. Apparently, the Reverend Jackson is very, very angry with how Illinois Senator Barack Obama talks to black people, and with his pledge to up the ante on President George W. Bush's faith-based initiative. So perturbed is Jackson that he wishes to perform a certain ghastly procedure on the Senator, one that if executed on a sheep would be what a cowboy chef would say is the first step in the preparation of Rocky Mountain Oysters.

This is either a huge problem or a huge gift for the Illinois Senator. It is hardly good for a prominent Obama proxy to wish him castrated, worse still if he is so passionate about seeing it done that he is willing if not eager to do the job himself. On the other hand, it's a great opportunity for Obama to distance himself from the grievance-mongering Jackson and his ilk.

On Wednesday, Jackson officially retracted his desires to enter the eunuch-ing business, and on Thursday the Post delivered us the politically volatile goods like this (below the fold):

Laura Ingraham, syndicated radio talk show host and now host of Just In on the Fox News Channel, filled in for Bill O'Reilly, syndicated radio talk show host, on his FNC Show The O'Reilly Factor on Friday, June 20.

And led off with her Talking Points Memo, in which she excoriated the left's call for the return of the Fairness Doctrine, dismantling and undermining every liberal (alleged) justification for its return.

The Fairness Doctrine would mean the end of conservative talk radio; death by governmental censorship. Let Congress know this can not happen.

An April 7 CBS Evening News report on the health care monetary burden of illegal aliens on American taxpayers has just now drawn the ire and the fire of the two largest Hispanic grievance groups -- the National Council of La Raza (translation: "The Race") and the Mexican American Legal and Educational Fund (MAL (not Mos) DEF).

Byron Pitts' piece is fairly mild and pretty much down the middle of the fairway, and CBS News and their (for now) flagship girl Katie Couric deserve kudos for at least addressing the issue.

But the Latino Intolerance Duo (LID -- as in flipped their's) can not let stand unchallenged the reporting of the costs of the invasion. Pitts pointing out that someone somewhere (that would of course be us) must pick up the tab -- when the likes of Fabiola (the illegal alien mother featured in the story) does not -- is to them an "anti-Latino falsehood". They do not offer how or why something so obvious as this is either "anti-Latino" or a "falsehood" -- we are left to assume that their asserting it empirically makes it so.

On our end, there was bit of a bone to be picked with the Tiffany Network's numbers.

And the Best of Randi Rhodes

To reassign the estimable Bill Cosby's Fat Albert assessment, Air America's Randi Rhodes is reminiscent of school on Saturday -- no class.

Captured is a five-plus minute video (here below the fold) in which Rhodes -- utilizing language and manner more sailor than lady-like -- excoriates both the junior Senator from New York and former Vice Presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro at length as the "W" word (not "Woman"). She also touches on the Governor Eliot Spitzer story, commenting a bit on his "W" and her over-pricedness, and finds a little time to slam "Dina McGreevey", wife of disgraced former New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey.

Rhodes was so gracefully serving as an emissary for the liberal radio network for the alleged benefit of one of its affiliates. So appreciative and proud was Air America that they suspended her - an apparently rare (in fact unprecedented -- big time h/t to The Radio Equalizer) disciplinary move by the network.

What is decidedly less exceptional are similar invective-laden screeds from the hack broadcaster whose show and network have fewer listeners than the number of people who read their VCR operator's manuals.