Acting as though the latest news the war against ISIS, new developments in the Hillary Clinton scandal or any other story barely existed, the “big three” networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC devoted a whopping 24 minutes and three seconds of their Tuesday evening newscasts to obsessing over Donald Trump’s proposed ban on Muslims entering the United States. Not surprisingly, NBC Nightly News led the way by spending nearly half its newscast on Trump with five segments adding up to 12 minutes and 34 seconds. 

While appearing on the Tuesday installment of MSNBC’s All In, former Chief of Staff to Colin Powell and retired Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson compared former Vice President Dick Cheney to Joseph McCarthy and suggested that he “cannot recognize reality” due to him either being “shocked” on 9/11 or suffering from a “physiological” or “biological” problem.

Fifty years from now, everyone will agree that Karl Rove committed treason by revealing the identity of CIA "spy" Valerie Plame, tea partiers shouted the N-word at a black congressman and Duke lacrosse players gang-raped a stripper. Liberals tell whopping lies, and most conservatives can't be bothered to learn history.

In the last few days, we've heard both George Will and Charles Krauthammer, otherwise intelligent people, repeating bogus Democratic talking points about how Joe McCarthy allegedly smeared innocents with false allegations.

I've not been much of a fan of Time magazine for years, though I am again, if only briefly.

Fresh off Rachel Maddow's ludicrous claim that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was "not all that well known" until he was killed by the US military in 2006 and allegedly elevated in death beyond what he was in life, Time magazine published a special issue titled "The End of bin Laden."

The cover of the magazine, which can be seen here, shows an illustration of bin Laden crossed out with a prominent red "X" -- as in, buh bye.

Turns out this is only the fourth time in Time's history that the magazine has gone with the "X" cover. Prior to bin Laden's rude awakening by Navy SEALs, Time did this for only three other globally reviled figures: Adolf Hitler, Saddam Hussein -- and Zarqawi. (video after page break)

Thursday’s CBS Early Show looked back at 1954 as part of its ‘Time Machine’ series, with co-host Harry Smith praising former CBS anchor Edward R. Murrow for taking on Senator Joseph McCarthy: “McCarthy was on a kind of a witch hunt. Ed Murrow boldly recognized that and took him on....It was very gutsy and very risky on Murrow’s part....McCarthy was a bully. Ed Murrow said ‘I’m not going to stand for it.’”

Smith made the comments during a pre-taped video montage in which he and the other Early Show co-hosts reminisced about the time period. The montage concluded with co-host Maggie Rodriguez, who was off on Thursday, observing: “I think 1954 was an important year in American history because people stood up for what was right, whether it was desegregation or speaking out against a Senator who was targeting people as communists, it was a year of fighting for the truth.”

As the Media Research Center’s recently released special report Better Off Red demonstrates, Smith wasn’t exactly a staunch Cold Warrior. As the Soviet Union began to fall apart in 1990, Smith, then co-host of CBS’s This Morning, lamented: “Yes, somehow, Soviet citizens are freer these days — freer to kill one another, freer to hate Jews....Doing away with totalitarianism and adding a dash of democracy seems an unlikely cure for all that ails the Soviet system.”