From The Late Show with David Letterman, Nov. 24, 2008.

I have maintained that the Obama presidential campaign will be studied and dissected by political scientists for years to come. It is, quite simply, one of the most impressive implementations, not only of Howard Dean's 50 State Strategy, but of grassroots-level organizing that lifted the entire campaign of a serious longshot candidate right into the White House.

60 Minutes' Steve Kroft sat down with the executive team of campaign manager David Plouffe, chief strategist David Axelrod (who will move to the White House as Senior Advisor), senior aide Robert Gibbs (who will move to the White House as Press Secretary) and communications and research specialist Anita Dunn to discuss the campaign about 24 hours after victory. They touch on the amazing organizing at the local level, the paradigm-shifting strategy to ignore the red state/blue state divide and those moments that threatened to derail the campaign, like the controversy over Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Full transcripts at 60Minutes.com

The wingnuts have been proudly displaying Dan Rather's scalp on their trophy wall ever since they chased him out of CBS with the "Memogate" nonsense. But this particular scalp may be about to turn out not to be so dead after all.

Last year Rather filed a lawsuit against CBS that mostly drew derisive snorts from both the wingnuts and the Village Idiots, but which in fact promises to be very interesting indeed if the trial takes place. As things stand now, it's set to go to trial in February.

But already some noteworthy items are seeping out.

Felix Gillette at the New York Observer got a look at some of the documents and found a list of names that CBS executives had compiled for its "independent panel" to examine the claims against Rather.

The list includes Mr. Boccardi's name as well such seemingly reasonable potential candidates as David Gergen, Gene Roberts (former managing editor of The New York Times) and Dick Wald (former president of NBC News).

Then things get a little bit more conservative. Under the category "others" are the names of potential candidates such as… Matt Drudge, Ann Coulter, and Rush Limbaugh.

Herein, CBS’s full list of "others":

* William Buckley
* Robert Novak
* Kate O’Beirne
* Nicholas Von Hoffman
* Tucker Carlson
* Pat Buchanan
* George Will
* Lou Dobbs
* Matt Drudge
* Robert Barkley
* Robert Kagan
* Fred Barnes
* William Kristol
* John Podhoretz
* David Brooks
* William Safire
* Bernard Goldberg
* Ann Coulter
* Andrew Sullivan
* Christopher Hitchens
* PJ O’Rourke
* Christopher Caldwell
* Elliot Abrams
* Charles Krauthammer
* William Bennett
* Rush Limbaugh

At the very bottom of the list, someone wrote in one more name. "Roger Ailes."

What, Torquemada wasn't available?

Eli has more.

Oasis - Sunday Morning Call

That's right, folks, it's your Sunday Morning Bobblehead Call. We're now on what, week 5 of PalinWatch? Meh, you know the McCain camp won't dare let her on any of these shows, so what's the point?

It does look like the battle of the Bailout on This Week, with Barney Frank and former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers on one side and Roy Blunt and James Baker on the other. And it's the battle of the presidential candidate proxies on Fox News Sunday, with David Axelrod and Rick Davis going toe to toe. Actually, given how well she's spoken for the Democrats of late, the one I'm looking forward to the most is Debbie Wasserman-Schultz on Late Edition.

ABC's "This Week" - Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass.; Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Mo.; Former Treasury secretaries James Baker and Lawrence Summers.

CBS' "Face the Nation" - Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.; Gov. Bill Ritter, D-Colo.; Mayor Doug Wilder, Richmond, Va.; Rep. Adam Putnam, R-Fla.; C. Fred Bergsten, director, Peterson Institute for International Economics.

NBC's "Meet the Press" - Gov. Jon Corzine, D-N.J.; Former Rep. Rob Portman, R-Ohio.

CNN's "Late Edition" - Forbes Inc. CEO Steve Forbes (McCain supporter) and former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich (Obama supporter); Sens. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. and Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, D-Fla.

"Fox News Sunday" - David Axelrod, campaign adviser for Barack Obama; Rick Davis, campaign adviser for John McCain; Gov. Ed Rendell, D-Pa.; Gov. Tim Pawlenty, R-Minn.

"The Chris Matthews Show" - Panel: Howard Fineman, Cynthia Tucker, Gloria Borger, David Ignatius. Topics: Can McCain rescue his campaign as the economy sinks? Who benefits as McCain and Obama question each other's character? Meter Questions: Is Gov. Sarah Palin a smart pick for John McCain? YES: 8 NO: 4 Can McCain beat Obama among swing voters? YES: 2 NO: 10

So, who's catching your eye this morning?

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I often wonder what it's like to live in the simplistic black-and-white world of your typical Republican bobblehead. Are their brains truly this unable to process nuance? Take, for example, Rep. Heather Wilson (R-NM) who is only too happy to categorize (with host Bob Schieffer's enabling, bless his Republican-loving little heart) Barack Obama as unpatriotic. Why? Because at his speech in Germany, he acknowledged that there have been errors in America's foreign policy.

SCHIEFFER: Well, that sounds like you’re saying that he’s somehow unpatriotic, which seemed to be the underlying theme of what she said yesterday, Congresswoman.

WILSON: Well, he has talked down about America and you know, we’ve always had this history of saying, well, politics ends at the waters’ edge. And it didn’t for Barack Obama. He’s been critical, not only of the President, but of American policy and has kind of a negative view of the American world. That’s not unusual, frankly, among liberals in kind of post-Vietnam America to say that America is the problem. I think Sarah Palin believes that America is part of the solution. We are an exceptional country, we are a force for good and we need to talk about the good things we do.

Sigh. Look, I love my kids more than life itself. I think they are incredible, beautiful, smart children that make me proud to be their mom everyday. But even that primal, ferocious love I have for my kids doesn't prevent me from seeing that they are also impatient, impulsive and occasionally bratty. It doesn't blind me to their failings and I'm not a terrible mother if I acknowledge the areas in which they could improve when they have done wrong.

But apparently, in Heather Wilson's (and Bob Schieffer, let's not forget he is the one framing this as such) world, what I should do is let my kids be monsters outside the house and then ignore others who suggest that they could exercise restraint, blaming them for not recognizing their inherent goodness.

Tell me, how is that acting in their best interests? And this is what Heather Wilson thinks the President ought to do on a national scale?

This segment originally aired in November of 2007.  I am a big opponent of the death penalty in general.  It's unfairly applied with minorities disproportionately receiving it, studies show it offers no deterrent to other crimes and the thought of even one innocent person executed wrongly makes it just horrifying to consider.  We are the only Western country that still has the death penalty and the fact that we stand with countries like Iran, Saudi Arabia and China in executing prisoners should not be a point of pride.  We at one time at least held to the standard of not executing the mentally ill or retarded, but even that no longer holds as James Clark of Texas or Greg Thompson above show. 

If you are interested in working towards the abolishment of the death penalty, contact Amnesty International for information on what you can do.

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Who is the last person on the planet that Barack Obama should take advice from?  Naturally, the person that Bob Schieffer asks on Face the Nation, Turd Blossom himself, Karl Rove.  Seriously, this guy is an advisor for the McCain campaign, he's the architect of one of the nastiest and most partisan campaigns in the history of the country and for some reason, Schieffer thinks it's legitimate to ask him his thoughts on Obama's VP pick.  Why?

Rove tries to spin this that if Obama selects a governor like Kaine from a red state, it's a political choice, rather than a presidential one, because all Obama is focused on is the electoral votes.  Okay.  Because Cheney was a real presidential choice...oh wait, Bush didn't make the choice.  Cheney chose himself. That's thinking big and broad.

What cracks me up the most is Karl Rove's attempt to diminish Kaine as a VP candidate:

I didn't say I thought he ought to, I said he probably would pick a Red State Democrat, because I think he's going to make an intensely political choice, not a governing choice. He's going to view this through a prism of a candidate, not through the prism of President. That is to say, he's going to pick somebody that he thinks on the margin will help him in a state like Indiana or Missouri or Virginia. He's not going to be thinking big and broad about the responsibilities as President. Well, with all due respect again to Gov. Kaine, he's been a governor for three years. He's been able but undistinguished; I don't think people could really name a big, important thing that he's done.

And this differs from GWB's tenure as Governor of Texas how?  Oh that's right, the Governor of Virginia actually works more than the constitutionally weak Governor of Texas.  And how did GWB distinguish himself, other than putting more people to death than all the rest of the states combined?  By failing at every other business he started. 

Talk about appealing to the low information voter.

Transcripts below the fold

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As I reported earlier, CBS violated their own Standards when it aired the heavily edited interview of John McCain with Katie Couric. A CBS spokesman tried to defend their behavior and told TV Newser:

Of the 14-minute interview, a little less than three minutes was used on the Evening News. A CBS spokesperson tells TVNewser, "As all news organizations do with extended interviews, last night's Obama and McCain interviews were edited to fit the available time and to give viewers a fair expression of the candidates' major differences. The full transcript and video were and still are available at CBSNews.com."

OK, so this person is saying that they edited these segments to ' give viewers a fair expression of the candidates' major differences'.

I'm sorry that is not what CBS did in this case and maybe the spokesman should look at their own standards in editing and then get back to me. Here's what CBS has to actually say about it: CBS manuel---CBS NEWS STANDARDS....SEC111-5....EDITING:

Editing is essential to the practice of journalism. We must make every effort to ensure that our editing reflects fairly, honestly and without distortion what was seen and heard by our reporters and recorded by our cameras and microphones. The editing process requires careful news judgments geared to the individual facts of each situation.

Interviews are to be edited in a straightforward manner, preserving the sense of the interview. Even a short sound bite should accurately reflect the spirit of the entire interview. An answer may not be taken out of context if the result is to distort the original meaning. If a question to an interview subject is used, the answer must be to that specific question. The question and the answer may be edited, but not in a way that would distort the meaning of either. Answers to different questions may not be combined to give the impression of one continuous response. In short, we cannot create an answer merely because we wish the subject had said it better.

In the editing of an interview, cutaway shots may be used (see Section II-3 for shooting cutaways in the field). But the cutaways must not distort what actually occurred. The correspondent may register appropriate visual expressions, such as smiling at a joke. In all cases, however, the correspondent must be careful that casual expressions do not convey approval or disapproval of what is being said.

The narration leading to a sound bite must reflect the question that elicited the response. For example, we cannot say, in leading into an expert on explosives, "We asked Dr. Doe how the bomb that killed eight people was constructed," when the original question was, "How do you make a homemade bomb?

Let's repeat what CBS says is their Standard.

Answers to different questions may not be combined to give the impression of one continuous response. In short, we cannot create an answer merely because we wish the subject had said it better.

This is exactly what CBS did in the segment and I'm not even including the important McCain gaffe that they left out. How can CBS defend the Couric/McCain interview after we read their own guidelines? It's outrageous behavior. I'm contacting TV Newser for comment now. Contact CBS again and ask for a correction.

UPDATE: I got a call from CBS. They are getting hit with a ton of calls about this story.  I'm waiting for a direct response from the Nightly News now.

TV Show CBS Evening News with Katie Couric

(212) 975-3247

evening@cbsnews.com

http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/eveningnews/main3420.shtml  (212) 975-3691, (212) 975-1893

 Well all have heard of Curveball by now. 

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 Rafid Ahmed Alwan defected from Iraq in 1999, claiming that he had worked as a chemical engineer at a plant that manufactured mobile biological weapon laboratories as part of an Iraqi weapons of mass destruction program.^[1] Alwan's allegations were subsequently shown to be false by the Iraq Survey Group's final report published in 2004.

It was Colin Powell's darkest hour, but he would have went to war with Iraq without briefing the UN anyway. (Woodward's book "Plan of Attack" tells us that) ..BushCo used this fraud who wanted a green-card in Germany to fool the American people and bring the country into an immoral war with Iraq. 60 Minutes did a fine piece on him Sunday night that should be seen so we will be reminded that "intelligence" can always be manipulated---even after it's debunked by our own intelligence department.

CBS News:

Did Saddam Hussein have weapons of mass destruction? No, he did not. We've known that for some time now. So where did the intelligence come from that he was building up his arsenal? Fantastically, the most compelling part came from one obscure Iraqi defector who came in and out of history like a comet. His code name, ironically, was "Curve Ball" and his information became the pillar of the case Colin Powell made to the United Nations before the war. Who is Curve Ball and how did he fool the world's elite intelligence agencies?...read on

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