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1. Weir and Lauer Scold Democrats for Feckless Efforts to End War
ABC's Bill Weir on Saturday, and NBC's Matt Lauer on Monday, expressed disappointment at inadequate efforts by Democrats to end the war in Iraq. On Saturday's Good Morning America, Weir pressed left-wing Senator Russ Feingold: "Do you hold your Party responsible, not only for the authorization, but for the seeming inability to muster a unified front to, to fight the President on this, to get what you want, what apparently the American people wanted with the midterm elections and end the war?" Weir followed up by using Feingold to prod Senator Clinton: "Should Democratic presidential candidates be firmer, stronger? Should Hillary Clinton come out and, and express regret for authorizing this war?" On Monday's Today, Lauer fretted to Tim Russert: "If they can't pass a kind of symbolic vote how do they ever have the strength to do something more serious?" Lauer described the Democratic maneuvers on resolutions as feckless: "Put yourself in the position of Joe and Mary Smith living somewhere across this country right now and you've watched these politicians for more than a month talk about passing a symbolic vote. Does it amount to little more than them ringing someone's door bell and running away?"
2. U.S. as 'Imperialistic Bully' Is 'Familiar' to CBS Character
It seems no genre of television is safe from gratuitous shots at how the Iraq war makes the U.S. an "imperialistic bully." On Sunday's episode of CBS's Cold Case, a drama about a supposed squad of Philadelphia Police Department detectives who solve old murders, a witness is questioned about a 1981 murder of a husband and wife who were anti-Vietnam war hippies. When the woman who attended a college reunion party shortly before the murders recalls how "I was still kind of stuck in my old hippy ways. Didn't fit very well into the decade of greed," "Detective Scotty Valens" points out how they all attended college "at the height of the Vietnam war." That leads the woman, who by the end of the show is arrested as the murderer, to recall how the victims "were protesting against an America that had become an imperialistic bully." To which "Detective Lilly Rush," the star of the program played by Kathryn Morris, chimes in with an obvious allusion to Iraq: "Sounds vaguely familiar."
3. Cuba Honors Pro-Castro NY Times Reporter with Marble Plaque
In his "Grapevine" segment on Monday night, FNC's Brit Hume highlighted how "the New York Times has received a high honor from the communist Cuba Saturday: a marble plaque honoring the interview 50 years ago by New York Times reporter Herbert Matthews that helped create the legend of Fidel Castro." Hume noted how an infamous 1957 article by Matthews "made Fidel Castro an international figure overnight." Hume recited the glowing Matthews story: "'The personality of the man is overpowering. It was easy to see that his men adored him and also to see why he has caught the imagination of the youth of Cuba all over the island. Here was an educated, dedicated fanatic, a man of ideals, of courage and of remarkable qualities of leadership.'"
4. "Top Ten Ways George W. Bush is Celebrating President's Day"
Letterman's "Top Ten Ways George W. Bush is Celebrating President's Day."
 Weir and Lauer Scold Democrats for Feckless
Efforts to End War
ABC's Bill Weir on Saturday, and NBC's Matt Lauer on Monday, expressed disappointment at inadequate efforts by Democrats to end the war in Iraq. On Saturday's Good Morning America, Weir pressed left-wing Senator Russ Feingold: "Do you hold your Party responsible, not only for the authorization, but for the seeming inability to muster a unified front to, to fight the President on this, to get what you want, what apparently the American people wanted with the midterm elections and end the war?" Weir followed up by using Feingold to prod Senator Clinton: "Should Democratic presidential candidates be firmer, stronger? Should Hillary Clinton come out and, and express regret for authorizing this war?"
On Monday's Today, Lauer fretted to Tim Russert: "If they can't pass a kind of symbolic vote how do they ever have the strength to do something more serious?" Lauer described the Democratic maneuvers on resolutions as feckless: "Put yourself in the position of Joe and Mary Smith living somewhere across this country right now and you've watched these politicians for more than a month talk about passing a symbolic vote. Does it amount to little more than them ringing someone's door bell and running away?"
The MRC's Scott Whitlock corrected the closed-captioning against the video for the February 17 GMA session with Feingold:
Bill Weir: "We turn now to more on the President's Iraq strategy and yesterday's vote of non-support from both Democrats and some Republicans in the House of Representatives. It is unlikely the Senate will have enough votes to continue that resolution. But Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin says it doesn't go far enough anyway. He wants to cut funding to hasten withdrawal from Iraq. And he joins us this morning. Senator, good morning."
[Russ Feingold]
Weir: "As a practical matter, how do you do this? How do you cut off money without compromising the men and women who are already over there?"
Feingold: "Well, let me, first of all, say how significant the vote in the House was yesterday and how significant the vote in the Senate will be today. The fact is that there are people in the Democratic side and some Republicans who want to end this war. And I give them credit for that. And I am part of that effort as well. But we're being ignored. Republicans in the Senate, by and large, don't want, don't want us to do this. The, the President doesn't want us to do this. And if we really want to end this war, which we do, we're going to have to take tougher steps. And that tougher step has to come in the form of saying, 'Look, this war has to come to an end by a certain point, and there won't be funding after this point.' It's in the constitution. It's been done many times before in American history. We did it in the '90s in some Somalia. And this idea that somehow we're gonna take away things from the troops and leave them there is one more silly and phony argument from the administration. That's not what's being considered at all.
Weir: "If you, but if you do get what you'd like and troops come home in six months, what will happen to Iraq?"
Feingold: "That's one of the toughest questions there is. And obviously, there are going to be continued problems. But many experts, in fact I think most experts believe our keeping 140,000 of our troops on the ground there actually ends up inflaming the situation due to no fault of the troops themselves. We've got to get out of there and reassess our situation and focus on the entire region, and in particular, the fight against those that attacked us in 9/11. Leaving our people there to be shot at is not a solution to Iraq or for anyone else."
Weir: "Do you hold your Party responsible, not only for the authorization, but for the seeming inability to muster a unified front to, to fight the President on this, to get what you want, what apparently the American people wanted with the midterm elections and end the war?"
Feingold: "Oh this is George Bush's war, without a doubt. Those democrats who voted for it made a mistake. And many of them have said they shouldn't have done it. But the key now is are the Democrats going to continue this momentum of having this special session on Saturday in the Senate is the way to show that we're serious but it has to be followed by very aggressive action to actually end the war. We have to show that we're a Party that heard the message on November 7th and it is time, it's been three months to prove that we're gonna to take whatever steps are necessary, including dealing with appropriations bills to try to actually end this war. That's what the American people want and the American people are, of course, right about that."
Weir: "And, and quickly, should Democratic presidential candidates be firmer, stronger? Should Hillary Clinton come out and, and express regret for authorizing this war?"
Feingold: "What, what all Democratic candidates for president should do is say they are for a timeline to end the war and a clearer time frame, and that they're willing to take away the money for the war to enforce it. That's what we should be saying right now. I hope Democratic candidates are saying that because that's what the American people want."
The MRC's Geoffrey Dickens took down the relevant portions of the February 19 Today segment with Lauer and Russert:
Matt Lauer: "So the Democrats in the Senate failed to pass this vote so that they can even debate this Iraq strategy and there's even some who are talking about possibly bringing up the idea of revoking the 2002 authorization to go to war. If they can't pass a kind of symbolic vote how do they ever have the strength to do something more serious?"
Russert: "Well it's gonna be very difficult because in the U.S. Senate you need 60 votes to cut off debate. The Democrats have a solid core of 49 votes for that kind of measure and about six or seven Republicans, Matt. So it'll be very, very difficult to enact that kind of measure."
Lauer: "And looking at what happened in the House at the end of the week, over the weekend basically the House did pass this resolution you know saying that they oppose the surge in troops but put yourself in the position of Joe and Mary Smith living somewhere across this country right now and you've watched these politicians for more than a month talk about passing a symbolic vote. Does it amount to little more than them ringing someone's door bell and running away?"
Russert: "Well that's the question. The Democrats hope it would be a vote of no confidence as Kelly's piece indicated and it certainly played in the papers around the world that the legislature, the parliament, the Congress of the United States was, at least one House, was standing up against the President's Iraq policy. But the difficulty is, what substantively will change in the policy and as of today, nothing."
Lauer: "Let's talk about Hillary Clinton. She was back and forth between New Hampshire and Washington over the weekend, still getting some tough questions about her vote back in 2002 to give the President authorization to go to war. And now she's got a harder stance on this. She says, quote, 'If the most important thing to any of you is choosing someone who did not cast that vote or said his vote was a mistake, then there are others to choose from. But for me, the most important thing now is trying to end this war.' So, in effect, Senator Clinton is putting an exclamation point on this issue saying, 'Look, you know, if this is an issue that's gonna make me lose your support, well that's less important to me than standing my ground.' What do you think of that strategy?"
Russert: "It's very similar to what she did in her reelection campaign for the Senate, Matt. She said, 'If you want me to say that I'm not gonna run for President, I'm not gonna say that and if that's important to you then don't vote for me.' So now she's calculated that John Edwards has said his vote is a mistake, that Barack Obama said he would've voted against the war from the very beginning and she is distinguishing herself from her two primary opponents. She's-"
Lauer: "She's also, by the way, without me interrupting, she's also distinguishing herself from someone like a John Kerry in 2004."
Russert: "Absolutely. She is hoping that she's perceived as someone who is putting forth strength rather than perceived as someone who's stubborn. She is concerned that if she acknowledges a mistake, a misjudgment that will hurt her in a general election campaign when she is a woman candidate for President of the United States whose positions on national security will be looked at under a microscope."
Lauer: "Right and by the way there's an article in the New York Times over the weekend says people within her campaign feel this is already the make or break issue, this decision to apologize or not apologize, with Senator Clinton."
Russert: "They are certainly making that and I think her decision this weekend to stand firm is what we're gonna have. It's gonna give a lot of opportunity to her opponents with a Democratic primary base."
 U.S. as 'Imperialistic Bully' Is 'Familiar'
to CBS Character
It seems no genre of television is safe from gratuitous shots at how the Iraq war makes the U.S. an "imperialistic bully." On Sunday's episode of CBS's Cold Case, a drama about a supposed squad of Philadelphia Police Department detectives who solve old murders, a witness is questioned about a 1981 murder of a husband and wife who were anti-Vietnam war hippies. When the woman who attended a college reunion party shortly before the murders recalls how "I was still kind of stuck in my old hippy ways. Didn't fit very well into the decade of greed," "Detective Scotty Valens" points out how they all attended college "at the height of the Vietnam war." That leads the woman, who by the end of the show is arrested as the murderer, to recall how the victims "were protesting against an America that had become an imperialistic bully." To which "Detective Lilly Rush," the star of the program played by Kathryn Morris, chimes in with an obvious allusion to Iraq: "Sounds vaguely familiar."
[This item was posted Monday, with a screen shot of "Lilly Rush" talking to the witness/criminal, on the MRC's NewsBusters blog: newsbusters.org ]
CBS's page for Cold Case: www.cbs.com
The page for actress Kathryn Morris: www.cbs.com
 Cuba Honors Pro-Castro NY Times Reporter
with Marble Plaque
In his "Grapevine" segment on Monday night, FNC's Brit Hume highlighted how "the New York Times has received a high honor from the communist Cuba Saturday: a marble plaque honoring the interview 50 years ago by New York Times reporter Herbert Matthews that helped create the legend of Fidel Castro." Hume noted how an infamous 1957 article by Matthews "made Fidel Castro an international figure overnight." Hume recited the glowing Matthews story: "'The personality of the man is overpowering. It was easy to see that his men adored him and also to see why he has caught the imagination of the youth of Cuba all over the island. Here was an educated, dedicated fanatic, a man of ideals, of courage and of remarkable qualities of leadership.'"
Hume apparently based his item on a weekend Reuters dispatch from Havana: "Cuba honors American who made Castro a legend." See: in.today.reuters.com
A posting of the story with a shorter address: www.caribbeannetnews.com
I conducted searches in Nexis, Yahoo and Google News, but was unable to come up with any stories with a picture of the plaque and FNC did not show one.
A couple of weeks ago, the MRC's Rich Noyes put tegether a Special Report with many examples of how the U.S. media have gushed over the communist dictator, "Fidel's Flatterers: The U.S. Media's Decades of Cheering Castro's Communism."
The report features more than 20 videos, going back to 1988, culled by Michelle Humphrey from the MRC's archive, divided into five categories: # Field Trips to Fidel's Island "Paradise" # CNN's Havana Bureau: "Megaphone for a Dictator" # Elian Gonzalez, Back to the "Peaceable" Paradise # Touting Fidel and Cuba's Communist Revolution
For the Special Report and all the videos: www.mrc.org
Hume's "Grapevine" item on the February 19 Special Report with Brit Hume:
"The New York Times has received a high honor from the communist Cuba Saturday: a marble plaque honoring the interview 50 years ago by New York Times reporter Herbert Matthews that helped create the legend of Fidel Castro. The memorial is located on the site of Castro's hideout where the intrepid reporter met the future communist leader back in 1957. At the time, the Batista-led government was claiming that Castro was dead, but Matthews' article showed otherwise. The story made Fidel Castro an international figure overnight.
 "On February 24th, 1957, Matthews wrote [text on screen]: 'The personality of the man is overpowering. It was easy to see that his men adored him and also to see why he has caught the imagination of the youth of Cuba all over the island. Here was an educated, dedicated fanatic, a man of ideals, of courage and of remarkable qualities of leadership.'
"It is not the first time that New York Times correspondents have been honored for their reporting of fledgling communist dictators. In 1931, New York Times reporter Walter Duranty received a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on Joseph Stalin while dismissing the mass starvation of 12 million Ukrainian peasants as simply anti-communist propaganda."
 "Top Ten Ways George W. Bush is Celebrating
President's Day"
From the February 19 Late Show with David Letterman, the "Top Ten Ways George W. Bush is Celebrating President's Day." Home page for the Late Show: www.cbs.com
10. Took part in a great White House tradition by groping an intern
9. Same as every year -- watching Maury then going outside to hunt squirrels
8. Spent morning hiding eggs on White House lawn
7. Videotaped himself playing 'Stairway to Heaven' on guitar, put it on YouTube
6. Nothing -- Air Force One is stuck on the runway behind a JetBlue plane
5. Planning his 2008 re-election campaign
4. Thinking of creative new ways to alienate America from the rest of the world
3. Dig up Saddam Hussein, hang him again
2. Getting loaded and shaving his head like Britney
1. Did somebody say, 'Norbit'?
Norbit is the name of a new movie starring Eddie Murphy: www.meetnorbit.com
# Tuesday on the Late Show on CBS: ABC's Barbara Walters. Bill Maher is scheduled to be a guest on Tuesday's Tonight Show on NBC.
-- Brent Baker
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ABC's Bill Weir on Saturday, and NBC's Matt Lauer on Monday, expressed disappointment at inadequate efforts by Democrats to end the war in Iraq. On Saturday's Good Morning America, Weir pressed left-wing Senator Russ Feingold: "Do you hold your Party responsible, not only for the authorization, but for the seeming inability to muster a unified front to, to fight the President on this, to get what you want, what apparently the American people wanted with the midterm elections and end the war?" Weir followed up by using Feingold to prod Senator Clinton: "Should Democratic presidential candidates be firmer, stronger? Should Hillary Clinton come out and, and express regret for authorizing this war?" 
Matt Lauer: "So the Democrats in the Senate failed to pass this vote so that they can even debate this Iraq strategy and there's even some who are talking about possibly bringing up the idea of revoking the 2002 authorization to go to war. If they can't pass a kind of symbolic vote how do they ever have the strength to do something more serious?" 
It seems no genre of television is safe from gratuitous shots at how the Iraq war makes the U.S. an "imperialistic bully." On Sunday's episode of CBS's Cold Case, a drama about a supposed squad of Philadelphia Police Department detectives who solve old murders, a witness is questioned about a 1981 murder of a husband and wife who were anti-Vietnam war hippies. When the woman who attended a college reunion party shortly before the murders recalls how "I was still kind of stuck in my old hippy ways. Didn't fit very well into the decade of greed," "Detective Scotty Valens" points out how they all attended college "at the height of the Vietnam war." That leads the woman, who by the end of the show is arrested as the murderer, to recall how the victims "were protesting against an America that had become an imperialistic bully." To which "Detective Lilly Rush," the star of the program played by Kathryn Morris, chimes in with an obvious allusion to Iraq: "Sounds vaguely familiar." 
In his "Grapevine" segment on Monday night, FNC's Brit Hume highlighted how "the New York Times has received a high honor from the communist Cuba Saturday: a marble plaque honoring the interview 50 years ago by New York Times reporter Herbert Matthews that helped create the legend of Fidel Castro." Hume noted how an infamous 1957 article by Matthews "made Fidel Castro an international figure overnight." Hume recited the glowing Matthews story: "'The personality of the man is overpowering. It was easy to see that his men adored him and also to see why he has caught the imagination of the youth of Cuba all over the island. Here was an educated, dedicated fanatic, a man of ideals, of courage and of remarkable qualities of leadership.'" 
"On February 24th, 1957, Matthews wrote [text on screen]: 'The personality of the man is overpowering. It was easy to see that his men adored him and also to see why he has caught the imagination of the youth of Cuba all over the island. Here was an educated, dedicated fanatic, a man of ideals, of courage and of remarkable qualities of leadership.' 
