Deputy Secretary of State William Burns is expected to make the announcement at a 3pm briefing.

Goode notes that White House and State Department officials “have not commented publicly Wednesday, but Tuesday, White House spokesman Jay Carney indicated the administration was concerned about the lack of an alternative route in Nebraska.”

Congress had passed a provision giving the Obama Administration until February 21 to make a decision on the proposed 1,661-mile pipeline.

RELATED: Mike Gallagher Defends Keystone XL Pipeline: ‘We’re Just Polluting A Little Bit Of Water!’

Mother Jones environmental journalist Kate Sheppard earlier reported that President Obama’s hands were tied in the matter as “in order to approve the pipeline, he’d have to railroad the review process, which has not been completed yet. He’d also have to ignore a bunch of our nation’s fundamental environmental laws, like the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA).”

(h/t MoJo)

“Do you want children to have drinking water that’s polluted?” Colmes fired back at the conservative radio host.

“It’s offending these greenies! These kooks who are very important to the Obama re-election chances,” Gallagher exclaimed. “So this is a brilliant timing on his part. Let’s wait until after the election, we’ll deal with all of this later, but in the meantime, as Megyn points out, 20,000 jobs may be sacrificed in the name of political expediency.”

“The fact is that everything the president does by his detractors will be looked upon as some kind of political maneuver ,” Colmes observed. “You have to consider the fact that this would harm the environment and they’re now talking about re-routeing it, finding another place to go, another pipeline to use, and this may be just delayed, not permanently canceled.”

The Obama Administration earlier explained the delay reasoning that “this permit decision could affect the health and safety of the American people as well as the environment, and because a number of concerns have been raised through a public process we should take the time to ensure that all questions are properly addressed and all the potential impacts are properly understood.”

It will be interesting to see if Gallagher’s snarky trashing of environmentalists will become the standard bearer of pro-pollution talking points on the cable news shows.

Watch the two radio hosts battle it out over the Keystone XL pipeline below via Fox News:

RELATED: Media Outlets Struggle To Describe White House Chief Of Staff Bill Daley’s Demotion

Politico’s Jim Vandehei noted this may be a case of the White House responding to frustration by placing Peter Rouse, “who has been around for a long time,” in a role where he can handle “day-to-day activity,” particularly where Capitol Hill is concerned, with Daley now acting as “more of an ambassador” both to people in D.C. and within the business community.

“I think that that role probably better fits Daley’s core strengths as a leader,” Vandehei added, “but it does speak to this frustration internally with how the White House has been managed in this sort of post Rahm Emanuel era.”

You may recall that Daley was the subject of a recent — and rather revealing — Politico piece wherein the characterized the first three years of the Obama administration as “brutal” and “ungodly,” while laying out Obama’s plan for re-election.

RELATED: WH Chief Of Staff Bill Daley: First Three Years Of Obama Adminstration Have Been ‘Brutal’

Vandehei continued:

Capitol Hill that he’s been griping a bit about feeling like his advice is not being listened to internally and there is a common complaint that you hear from Democrats that if you’re not part of the original Obama team. So if you’re not David Plouffe, not David Axelrod, it’s hard to fit in with this group that’s been together for a long, long time. i think what you hear from Daley is what we’ve heard from a lot of other aides that have left the White House that were part of the inner sanctum.

When asked whether this could be seen as anything other than a demotion for Daley, Vandehei replied that “the truth is David Plouffe has always been the power inside this White House, so I think it’s more a reflection of the frustration people have felt internally and externally and it’s the White House reacting to that and trying to figure out the right formula, particularly in dealing with Capitol Hill.”

Have a look, via MSNBC:

As Shelton sees it, the company’s plans for its national 4G phone network would seriously compromise the effectiveness of high-precision GPS receiver systems used by the military, given that its spectrum would be about 5 billion times stronger than the military’s GPS system.

Appearing before the House Armed Services subcommittee yesterday, Shelton alleged that he’d repeatedly been pressured to say that “the interference problems could be mitigated” and that he’d been “asked to say things I didn’t agree with.”

FoxNews.com ventures that this alleged pressure may have come directly from the top:

It’s unclear who exactly pressured Shelton, but it’s possible the culprits are in White House, Department of Defense or the Office of Management and Budget, which each approve military testimony prepared for Congress. The House staff member also told Fox News a copy of Shelton’s prepared testimony was leaked to LightSquared.

The Pentagon did not respond to Fox News’ requests Thursday evening to comment for this story, though a spokeswoman for Shelton told the Washington Post that there was no improper influence on the general’s testimony. The Post also reported that the White House denied trying to influence Shelton’s testimony.

h/t FoxNews.com

The figure is significantly less than the 27,000 generals on the ground had hoped for, and less still than the 10,000 they said they could work with “in extremis.” Officials are concerned that drawing the number down to 3,000 troops on the ground will render their limited missions ineffectual. ”There is almost no room for security operations in that number; it will be almost purely a training mission,” voiced one source with concern.

Huffington Post’s Joshua Hersh has confirmed the figure, adding that there “may end up being as many as 5,000 troops in the country at any time, given the logistics of troop rotations.”  The draw-down, he emphasized, might significantly decrease American presence, but will not cut it out entirely. According to Brian Katulis, a senior fellow for the Center For American Progress, “the American footprint will remain quite large no matter what … We’re going to have the largest diplomatic and development presence in the world, and there’s going to be a very large army of private contractors defending them.”

The plan, already signed into action by Panetta, still requires Iraq approval. Presumed cost-cutting reasons aside, the Pentagon sounds unready to explain the drastic drop, spokesman George Little commenting only that “Discussions with the Iraqis on our post-2011 strategic relationship are ongoing, and no decisions on troop levels have been made,” and saying that the Pentagon will “continue to proceed with troop withdrawals as directed by the president.”

Meanwhile, Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani has in recent days called on central Iraqi government to keep American forces in the country, saying that: ”Iraqi security forces are still not prepared to secure protection for Iraq and the Iraqi army is not prepared to guard borders and the air force possesses nothing.”

Watch Bret Baier on Fox below:

 

Representative-elect Allen West from Florida appeared on Fox News Sunday and host Chris Wallace offered him an opportunity to back away from his past comments where he called the Democratic agenda a “left-wing, vile, vicious, despicable machine.” Instead, West chose to double-down reaffirming his belief that the government for the past two years has in fact been, “tyrannical, socialist, despicable,” because so much of the country’s production has been nationalized.

Wallace was perplexed and wondered if it was really as bad as West described it. Yet West seemed perfectly comfortable with his assessment. Welcome to Congress Mr. West, it looks like you’ll be a fun source of many many more controversial comments to come in the new year.

Watch the clip from Fox News below:

After a Beckian connect-the-dots chalkboard lesson connecting GE, General Motors, and the White House in apparently illicit business dealings, Bolling asks Coulter for comment on the relationship between these corporations and the Obama administration. She agrees with the general sentiment that there is something troublesome about their relations, though her argument repeatedly veers away from the corporations in favor of griping about how tiresome and oppressive incandescent lightbulbs are– “those cheesy little green light bulbs, they cause depression, they don’t light anything, they create eye strain, if you drop it you have to call a hazmat crew to clean it up…”

Finally, Bolling asked Coulter her feelings about the heads of some of the corporate entities working very closely with the White House, to which Coulter replies “what could be better for a socialist president? We really are moving towards the fascist president, the corporate government.”

Video via Fox Business below:

“We have to deal with the world as we find it,” Axelrod said during an unusually candid and reflective 90-minute interview in his office, steps away from the Oval Office. “The world of what it takes to get this done.”

“There are concerns,” he added, that Congress will continue to kick the can down the road in the future by passing temporary extensions for the wealthy time and time again. “But I don’t want to trade away security for the middle class in order to make that point.”

He’s correct that middle class Americans probably don’t want their taxes to go up just to prove a point. Additionally, passing a two-year extension of tax cuts for the wealthy tees up this debate for the 2012 presidential election, when billionaire’s rights will be low on voters’ list of priorities.

But flipping over these cards now means that Republicans won’t have to fight for that extension, or worse, can fight for even greater concessions. If passing an extension is inevitable, why give up the chance to make Republicans explain to the American people why their tax cuts are being held hostage by the interests of the people who have not been hurt by this recession? Make them fight tooth and nail for that extension, and then claim that “above politics” trophy that this administration is so fond of burnishing.

This is the same mistake they made on health care reform, starting where they wanted to end up, and it sets the tone for the next two years. The “professional left” contingent of the White House press corps has been looking for a sign that the administration has learned something from the last two years of trying to work with Republicans whose primary concern is the President’s failure. Unfortunately, it appears we have our answer.

Update: The White House is walking back Axelrod’s statements, but once you flip your cards over, you can’t make your opponent un-see them.

Florida Gubernatorial candidate Alex Sink, who lost to GOP candidate Rick Scott, had some harsh words for the Obama administration in an interview with Politico days after her loss.

Sink told Politico’s Jonathan Martin that the White House had been “tone-deaf” in the run-up to the election, despite having far more positive things to say about the Obama administration prior to Election Day. “They just need to be better listeners and be better at reaching out to people who are on the ground to hear about the realities of their policies as well as politics,” she said.

Sink described a “disconnect between the White House and the rest of the country” while she focused on two specific issues. “They weren’t interested in hearing my opinion on what was happening on the ground with the oil spill,” said Sink, while regarding health care, which she said was “unpopular” among seniors, “they never acknowledged that they had problems with the acceptance of health care reform.”

It’s interesting to see candidates like Sink turn against the White House… now that they’ve lost their election. What would have happened if Sink started saying this before the race was over? Maybe she could have picked up enough Independents to win her tight race.

Here’s a Fox News report about the comments, which seems to draw from parts of the Politico story word-for-word:

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Some background:Last week a federal judge declared that the Military could no longer enforce the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy, effectively ending the military’s 17 year-old ban openly gay troops. The Department of Justice, under the Obama Administration, has 60 days to appeal this ruling, and the judge who filed the original injunction is expected to deny the government’s request for a temporary stay of her injunction pending their appeal of her ruling.

But because Jon Stewart is, well, Jon Stewart, a clip of Biden touting his optimistically branded season was promptly followed by a mélange of cable news snippets that told of the summer’s “dismal,” “miserable,” and “record-low” economic numbers. Ahem. Funny.

“Could the [Obama] Administration think of a more ill-conceived name for this summer?” Stewart asked with frustration. And as we enter what Stewart calls “The Autumn of Nothing But Ramen Noodles for Dinner,” Austan Goolsbee, Obama’s new Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, tried to backtrack on Biden’s brazen claims:

The Vice President was talking about “The Summer of Recovery” in reference to the Recovery Act, that you would see the creation of a series of infrastructure and other projects ramping up over the summer, and you did see that.

Which, of course, sounds like something the Vice President would mean. Classic Biden! But Stewart still expressed his disappointment with Biden’s deceptive phrase; Stewart compared it to calling something “The Summer of Losing My Virginity” but not mentioning:

Well, I was referring to the summer being dedicated to the spirit of losing my virginity, involving a ramping up of chocolate flower production in expectation of future sexual relations, only to find out, at the end of camp, that girls like jerks instead of romance.

In retrospect, though, Stewart’s summer seems much more realistic than Biden’s.

“I don’t know if I’m professional left here,” Olbermann opened the segment, “but I’m sure as hell you are.” Moore, understandably, was humored by the title. “I’ve never heard the left heard to with the word ‘professional’ attached,” Moore joked, “I don’t know if I should take offense at that. It implies that we’re organized.”

As for Press Secretary Robert Gibbs‘s assertion that the “professional left” was now opposing President Obama, Moore called it an “odd, odd lashing out” and was grateful there wasn’t “an emergency slide nearby.” Then he got serious:

“What’s bothering them is that liberals and the left have been right from the beginning… [they enacted] more offshore oil drilling, they expanded the war in Afghanistan… everything then we’ve tried to push them to do has come back to bite them in a profound way.”

But, for the most part, Moore kept it light. After making his serious point, he hoped Gibbs wouldn’t write any fundraising letters (which he imagined would go something like “Dear biggest Obama supporters: you suck, send us money please”) and even gave a shoutout to, of all people, David Frum, agreeing with a point he once made that, while Republicans fear their base, Democrats hate it.

Video below:

When Beck came back from the break, he described the tension in the room as he picked up the phone and heard Griffin say “Is this Mr. Beck?” and, thinking it was “Team Obama,” was surprised to hear it was a viewer from Blanco, Texas who was able to see the number on his screen and called to let Beck know that any number of questionable viewers could have the number and cause mischief with it. “We’re going to have to change the phone now,” Beck asserted, and thanked Griffin.

It must have been a let-down for everyone on staff to wait so long for the phone to ring, only to get a random fan. But it’s also an indication of the level of loyalty that Beck can count on from his fans. Griffin saved the show from what would have inevitably been an embarrassing situation involving any number of mischievous characters from Jon Stewart to a cabal of morning zoo radio hosts– more than enough to merit some praise from the right that supports Beck. Dare I say it: Is Tim Griffin the new Joe the Plumber?

Video below:

Nugent is pretty dependable as a quotable political figure who loves guns and freedom and rock music and America. And he’s actually one of the more political rock stars to grace the Hannity studios (for example, Meatloaf was a guest on the first episode of Hannity & Colmes). And he relayed the concern that many Tea Partiers feel about the current US policy:

“They want to be productive members of society, and then they see an administration that is spitting on the U.S. Constitution, the Bill Of Rights, the Ten Commandments, the Golden Rule. So we, the Tea Partiers, we the people who are speaking up. I’m going to quote my hero, Dr. Martin Luther King: ‘We who engage in non-violent direct action are not the cause of tension, but rather, bringing to the surface the tension.”

Video from last night’s Hannity below:

The White House has received pretty strong criticism from the left and Gay activists for what was seen as inaction on the controversial policy of banning openly gay members of the US Armed forces. This compromise would hasten legislation, but run counter to Gates’ plan of taking time to research, review, and possibly build consensus among Pentagon apparatchiks. Gates has publicly stated his desire to repeal the policy, but appears to have a different method than White House staffers and the Congress with whom they are dealing.

FoxNews.com reports it thusly:

This would comport with a request made recently by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who favors the repeal, that any scrapping of the 1990′s-era law wait for a full review going on now at DOD on implementation. That review is expected to wrap up in December.

The major players here: Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, D-MI, Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-CT, and Iraq war veteran and Cong. Patrick Murphy, D-PA.

The three, according to Levin, have outlined their position in a letter to the Pentagon. “It authorizes DOD to repeal,” Levin said, but he would offer no more detail, as the negotiations are sensitive.

This will play out on the House floor later this week, when Murphy offers an amendment to the annual defense spending blueprint bill known as the Defense Authorization. The measure is opposed by the House Armed Services Committee Chairman, Ike Skelton, D-MO, who is facing a difficult re-election back home.

In the Senate, the measure will be debated and voted on in the Armed Services Committee later this week in closed session.

It is unclear how the vote will go in that committee, though the senior Senate Democratic source said, “We are optimistic, now that there is a compromise agreed to by DOD.”

Most committee Republicans are expected to oppose the measure, including war veteran Sen. John McCain, R-AZ. Sen. John Cornyn, R-TX, a committee member, told Fox earlier this year, after the President proposed a repeal in his State of the Union address, “At a time when we’re putting our men and women through long deployments, it’s really not a good idea to engage in social engineering in the military.”

Despite the fact that Beck is constantly a target of commentators across the spectrum both for his dramatic style and the complicated detailing of the Obama administration he goes through on his program every day, it’s rare to see someone be so flippant about his life’s work to his face. O’Reilly, who supports restricting Miranda to some extent in cases of radical Islamic terrorism, argued that national security should be the primary concern, and that terrorists shouldn’t be given privileges that, upon committing and act of terror, they no longer deserve.

Beck replied by asking for “no more power,” and pointing out what he sees as a dangerous tendency by the Obama administration to consolidate federal powers. “You’ve got a government right now who is saying that the tea party goers are terrorists and everything else!” As he was about to launch into an explanation of Sunstein’s– a regular on the Beck chalkboard– Marxist tendencies, O’Reilly, in his best grumpy old man voice, responded, “I don’t care about Cass Sunstein.” You should!” Beck responds, and after some crosstalk O’Reilly asks, “What is the conspiracy of the day?” O’Reilly continued by calling Beck a “history guy” who’s “got Ben Franklin running around,” and as such should “deal with reality.”

Beck took it in stride, and got back at O’Reilly by yelling at him for “[wrecking] my movie experience” in Iron Man 2, where, instead of seeing “hot chicks,” Beck had to deal with watching O’Reilly’s cameo appearance. When O’Reilly repeated that he still hasn’t had a chance to see the film, Beck channeled President Obama and noted, “See? People could be too successful.”

The “At Your Beck and Call” segment below:

Douglass says the experience has been “exhilarating and grueling,” but it is Douglass’ past job, ABC News Congressional Correspondent, that raises questions about her future plans.

Douglass joined the Obama campaign as a senior adviser in May 2008. She has recently been tasked with being the spokesperson concerning health care – a job that has, in part, run it’s course. Here’s some of her statement:

“After nearly 2 years of work that has been exhilarating and grueling in equal measure, I am going to step off the treadmill for awhile and rediscover the experience of dining with my husband on a regular basis,” Douglass said in a statement. She said she will be “cheering with pride from the sidelines as this historic law takes effect.”

Howard Kurtz broke the news on Twitter today.

Here’s Megyn Kelly discussing the story on Fox News this afternoon:

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Well, actually, we called them [The White House], Mark Mazzetti and Dexter Filkins had the story pretty well nailed down last Thursday and they took it to the White House for comment, of course, as we routinely do, and the folks at the White House said, well hold on for a second we need to talk to you about this, and several of the people from our Washington bureau went over to the White House and sat down with people from the National Security Council and the press office and they said that they were pretty sure that Mullah Baladar’s colleagues in the Taliban were not yet aware that he was in custody. I don’t know the details of it, but they thought it had been a clean snatch and they were afraid once the word got out, other Taliban officials would go deeper underground or take measures to cover their tracks, so they asked us to hold off for a while.

Keller explains why they decided to hold this time around (can you ever really be sure the administration is not pulling your strings in their own best interests) and not others…interesting that he says this time was a no-brainer.

No, we get asked to withhold information, not often but from time to time sometimes it’s a no-brainer, you know we have reporters embedded in military operations — obviously they don’t file information that would put troops at risk. W’ve had other stories that were much more controversial where we decided that we would publish. This one was not, honestly, a very hard call. Obviously we were eager to break the story, it represented a lot of resourceful reporting by Mark and Dexter, but there was no obvious public interest reason to rush the story into print and you know we are responsible people; we didn’t want to compromise what sounded like a possible intelligence coup.

Keller also notes the paper’s relationship with this White House is less “acrimonious” than with the last one. The entire interview is interesting, and a good reminder how much power what we now refer to as ‘old-school’ journalism wields: “There are others [stories] where to this day we can’t talk about things we’ve held out because they would, for example endanger agents who are working in foreign countries.” Full interview here.

John Podesta was asked by the Financial Times for his take on the “health” of American politics – and he thinks it “sucks.”

Podesta ran the Obama Administration’s transition team (and served as Pres. Clinton’s Chief of Staff), and now has returned to his job as founder and President of the Center for American Progress. He was interviewed by the Financial Times, in print but also on video, by Edward Luce, Washington Bureau Chief.

The 10-minute interview (below) had several interesting exchanges, but none will garner more attention than when Luce asked about “the condition, the health, of American politics at the moment,” and Podesta fired back immediately, “It sucks.” He was laughing – but it wasn’t because he was kidding. Apparently Evan Bayh isn’t the only one speaking out against Congress right now.

“It feels like a very frustrated country,” he said earlier in the interview. The clip has found its way on Fox News and MSNBC so far this morning (according to TV Eyes).

Podesta also agreed with Luce that, if no health care gets done this year, there will be “massacre” (Luce’s word) in November for Democrats. However, he doesn’t fault Pres. Obama fully. “I think the president is trying to re-engage with Republicans, but, quite frankly, he’s not dealing with the party of Lincoln,” he said. “He’s dealing with the party of Palin.”

He also took a couple shots at the Tea Party movement, before acknowledging it came from an honest place. “There was something clearly real about that, and they tapped into a sense that exists that we saw play out over the weekend in the Tea Party Convention,” he said.

Like any former administration official speaking bluntly about the President, this is sure to gain attention. But the use of the word “sucks” just ensures it will be part of the news cycle. Here’s the interview:

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O’Reilly opens up with a soft question – “President Obama, Rahm Emanuel, the Chicago guys – do they have any involvement in the case at all?” – which Blagojevich quotes out of his memoir to answer that yes, they do. But his follow-up, whether he thinks they will be embarrassed by the content of the taped conversations, froze the governor into repeating a series of lawyer-approved catchphrases that dodged the question.

O’Reilly, frustrated, spent the rest of the segment trying to wheedle him out of that corner, but the crafty Governor waited his time out. Unfortunately for him, because his public image is in such shambles that everything he says in public is automatically assumed to be the opposite of true, he just ended up basically incriminating Obama administration officials.

Video below:

Gibbs was clearly joking, of course, but this story goes a long way in showing what The Daily Caller is. Setting aside the surreal image of the entire Obama administration surrounding Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and reading his Miranda rights in unison, the story didn’t have any factual basis to claim that there was anything left to learn from Abdulmutallab. Still, I wanted to make sure there was no wiggle room in what counterterrorism czar John Brennan said last week. Here’s the video:

Whether you favor civil trials or military tribunals for terrorism suspects, the fact is that in this case, there was no intel lost to Abdulmutallab’s Miranda rights, which was likely a determining factor in the decision to try him in federal court.

I didn’t get to much else of The Daily Caller because of the early briefing time, but if this is Tucker Carlson’s idea of ax-less journalism, he’s not seeing the forest for the trees his axes are chopping down.

The Daily Caller was also the topic of some pre-briefing buzz in the press room, with generally favorable comments that veered toward, “Yeah, but another one?” As Mediaite can attest, however, there’s always room for a well-executed site with fresh ideas.

The gist of the AP report is that the first round of Recovery Act data posted on the internet contained significant overreporting of jobs created/saved. They interviewed Ed DeSeve, Senior Advisor to the President for Recovery Act Implementation, for the piece, the same adviser who made this statement as part of the White House’s response:

“This story draws misleading conclusions from a handful of examples. It looks at only a small portion of the data – an initial upload of data representing just two percent of Recovery Act spending – that was made publicly available before a full review of its accuracy could be done. Virtually all of the errors found by the AP had already been found by our review, and were already corrected in an update to be loaded onto Recovery.gov this week.

Tomorrow, more than 100,000 recipient reports will be posted on Recovery.gov. Unlike the small number of reports reviewed by AP, these reports have been reviewed for weeks, errors have been spotted and corrected, and additional layers of review by state and local governments have further improved the data quality. As a result, whatever problems the early and partial data had, the full data to be posted on Friday will provide the American people with an accurate, detailed look at the early success of the Recovery Act.”

He goes on to present “the real facts on the misleading AP story on the Recovery Act recipient reporting process.”

The problem is, the Associated Press notes all of this in their story, with one exception. Rather than concluding that the much larger round of reporting will definitely be more accurate, they say “The reporting problem could be magnified Friday” when the new data is posted. The AP does quote DeSeve’s assurances that the new data will be more reliable.

DeSeve’s “real facts” consist of things that are either already in the AP’s report, or won’t be available until Friday. It doesn’t seem fair to punish the AP writers for their lack of a time machine.

I’ve had problems with AP reporting in the past, but in this case, they’re on solid footing. The fact that they found errors is newsworthy, and they provided fairly broad context for their story. DeSeve should have thought of a way to tell his side of the story without trashing the AP.

Here’s the full text of the White House’s response to the AP article:

Next page: The White House Response to AP Story on Recovery Act

Politico is taking heat from all over the blogosphere for a story they posted Wednesday that conflated support for convicted rapist Roman Polanski with political donations to President Obama.  The splashy headline read “Roman Polanski Backers Gave $34k to Barack Obama, DNC.”

The story prompted a strong reaction from the DNC, whose spokesman called it “lowbrow…amateur hour…one of the silliest stories that I’ve ever seen.”  Politico is now being ripped by HuffPo, Media Matters, Gawker, and many others for what Salon calls the “Smear of the day.”  Politico, however, stands by their story:

“We will look for the political angle in virtually any story,” responded top Politico editor Jim VandeHei. “This short blog item was done for the Click page — where we run a lot of entertainment and personality items. It was quick item based on FEC data alone.”

Critics of Politico’s story point out that the data offered doesn’t actually support any sort of link between the President and Polanski, and seems designed solely to generate traffic from conservative websites.

I took a look at Politico’s story, then did some checking of my own.

First of all, Politico says that the Polanski arrest “sparked a vigorous national debate about sex, justice and extradition that – thus far – has yet to draw in the Obama administration.”  That’s not entirely accurate.  Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was asked about the case several days after the arrest:

Q Will the President pardon Polanski? Will he, or not?

MR. GIBBS: I don’t know of any pending pardon request, Lester.

Q Does he believe pedophiles should not be prosecuted?

MR. GIBBS: The President believes pedophiles should be prosecuted, Lester.

I also did some checking into this “US Government” that sought Polanski’s arrest, and it turns out Barack Obama is in charge of it.

Still, there is the matter of those 6 signatures on the Polanski petition.  The 7th, Harvey Weinstein, didn’t actually give Barack Obama any money at all.  In fact, Politico even points out that Weinstein gave $88,000 to Hillary Clinton.  I wonder why that didn’t make it into the headline?  Maybe he was the only Hillary donor on the list.  It’s still almost 6 times what Obama got, but let’s give Politico the benefit of the doubt and check it out.

Director Michael Mann (who didn’t make Politico’s list) donated $2300 to Hillary Clinton, Brett Ratner has donated $8,800 to Hillary (and $4,600 to John Edwards, tee-hee), Martin Scorsese donated $3,500 to Clinton, and Harvey Weinstein donated that whopping $88,000 to Hillary.  That’s $102,600 to Hillary, versus $15,500 to Barack Obama, almost a 7 to 1 difference.  Does Hillary’s name belong in a headline with a rapist?

I was also able to identify an even stronger link between Polanski and 2004 congressional candidate Nick Clooney.  Adrien Brody donated $2000 to Nick Clooney. and Weinstein gave Clooney $4,000.  Taken as a percentage of total dollars raised, Clooney cleans Obama’s clock by a 348-1 margin.  Is “Obama, DNC Snubbed by Polanski Pals in Favor of Nick Clooney” too long a headline?

Still, you have to give Politico credit for caring so much about women.

The political bias of cable news is a time-worn tale, particularly with Fox News. But  it seems like that narrative has made us so numb to blatant subjectivity that we can no longer see clear bias when its right in front of our faces. Does no one care anymore? Or maybe it’s just August and everyone’s on vacation?  Simply put — the amount of propaganda put forth from Fox News is far from fair and balanced — they are very near inciting riots.

Not so? If you watch Glenn Beck or listen to his radio show, you hear a lot of phrases like “waking the sleeping giant” and “we don’t want this country to become Russia.” Cut to the language of protesters confronting their elected officials in the town halls of the past week and one hears the same exact phrases spoken through held back tears and barely restrained emotion.

During Wednesday’s “Talking Points Memo,” O’Reilly made the rather bold claim that the Obama administration is specifically targeting Fox News. How did he make the deduction? Because White House spokesman Robert Gibbs recently said “Well, I think we all have something to lose, Matt, if we let cable television come to town hall meetings and kill health care reform for another year and put the special interests back in charge.”

Fox News – particularly O’Reilly – have always been quite savvy at “punching up” – that is, targeting entities that are well above their accepted station (i.e. their current debate with GE). Does claiming to be engaged in a “fight” with the White House serve their purpose? In terms of pleasing their audience it does — just hear the rabble rousers yell to their democratically elected representatives that they want their country back. From a publicity standpoint it’s a genius move – evil genius maybe.

There is  legitimate criticism that the Obama White House has not been able to articulate their new health care agenda in a simple and understandable way. The truth is that it’s currently a very complicated issue. But isn’t that part of the problem — that unnecessarily complex solutions create a multitude of loopholes that allow big corporations to turn a healthy profit? Is that how a free market is supposed to work? Is that the American way, or is it the problem?

The problem is not just with Fox News, nor with cable news in general. We are truly in a nation divided by media consumption, exacerbated by the rise of opinion journalism (at the cost of capital J – journalism). As Kurt Andersen has said, American’s now only consume media the reaffirms their pre-existing opinions.  The vacuum of differing views has been profitable for a number of media outlets, but what cost victory?

Mediaite Mash-up of Glenn Beck’s take on the health care debate: