Here's what I thought you'd like to hear about today:

1. Confusion over the leak
2. Rush Reads Wizbang
3. What Makes Old News New?
4. Heads in the Sand

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Confusion over the Leak

When is a leak not a leak? When the information is no longer classified, and can be freely disseminated. The press last week was attempting to link the President's declassification of the National Intelligence Estimate, which Lewis Libby turned into a disclosure to several reporters, with the disclosure of Valerie Plame as a CIA operative. As I mentioned in the last podcast, the New York Times has added to the confusion, by selectively reporting the following four words together: Leak, Libby, Bush, and Plame. By placing them near each other in the same article, the Times hopes that less careful readers will assume that they are all one in the same, and that somehow Bush leaked Plame's name, or told Libby to do so. That may in fact be true, but we would be very suprised if it were. The number of times those four words have been seen in artcles in the last week runs into the hundreds, so we could forgive the casual reader if they remain confused. In a sixth of a second Google News was able to locate over 2,000 articles containing all four terms:

Results 1 - 10 of about 2,860 for leak libby bush plame. (0.12 seconds)

Best of the Web noticed a letter to the editor of the New York Times that shows the confusion this has created:

Trial by Innuendo

So what's behind the kerfuffle over the "leak" that isn't a leak, in which President Bush is said to have declassified portions of the National Intelligence Estimate in order to rebut Joe Wilson's dodgy claims? Sarah Peck of Somerville, Mass., offers a clue, in a letter to the editor in Saturday's New York Times (third letter):

President Bush does in fact have the legal right to declassify information at any time. This does not make his disclosure morally defensible.

The president claimed that any person responsible for this leak would be removed from his administration. Is the president willing to stay true to his words, and admit the seriousness of his own offense?

Actually, the promise to which Peck alludes in her second paragraph has nothing to do with the NIE but involved the "leak" of Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA employee, which was supposedly at the root of the kerfuffle.

The evidence is overwhelming that Plame was a mere paper-pusher, not a covert agent as her lesser half, Wilson, had insinuated. It may be that special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald and some in the press are trying to keep alive the Plame kerfuffle by way of innuendo--by pointing to the "leak" that wasn't really a leak and that had nothing to do with Plame so as to confuse people like Sarah Peck into thinking the president did something wrong. We've received numerous reader emails since Friday that evince similar confusion.

It's not just readers who are confused by this.

I subscribe to the Slate Podcast from Slate.com. These are Andy Bowers creation, usually taking material from Slate articles. But they also have a weekly Friday gabfest, where some of their editors get together around a table and talk about the week's news. These podcasts offer a wonderful glimpse into the minds of left leaning editors, as they honestly discuss the day's news from their perspective. I was amazed at last Friday's gabfest, because of the collosal ignorance of these supposedly smart media professionals about the four words, "leak, bush, libby, plame". Listen to this clip to get an idea how these media mavens have been hoodwinked by the press conflation exercise at work.

Play clip.

Notice the attempt there to imply that this disclosure of formerly classified information can't possibly be the work of President Bush, since every like minded liberal is certain that Bush is above the fray, and doesn't engage in petty politics. That's the media's story, and they are sticking to it, regardless of the pesky facts.

Rush Reads Wizbang

Kim Priestap is a new blogger for Wizbang, but already she has been noticed by the king of talk radio, Rush Limbaugh. In his first hour on Monday, at about the 28 minute spot, he talked about surfing the internet over to Wizbang to read about Kim's post on the Democrats recruiting at the pro-illegal immigration rallies. You can read about it and download audio from Rush's site, or listen to this clip from the show now.

Play Clip.

What Makes Old News New?

Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post has a Sunday morning TV show that is getting better and better every week. Thanks to TiVo, I can watch it at a reasonable hour, instead of the 6:30 am Sunday time slot. Yesterday I watched and enjoyed Jeff Jarvis talking about the Katie Couric move to CBS night time anchor spot, complete with a CBS news ex-producer with his talking points. I don't have time to play that segment now. But later in the show was a priceless exchange between Kurtz, Arianna Huffington, and Scott Johnson of Powerline Blog. Scott was extremely well prepared, on the subject of the declassification of the National Intelligence Estimate from 2003. Listen to this clip of Scott, with Arianna's answer to his eviseration of the news media. Her response to why we are talking about a 2003 declassification in 2006? Because it was on the front page of the New York Times.

Play clip.

The ultimate justification for anything in the news is that it's in the news. I report it, therefore it is news. What arrogance!

Heads in the Sand

Another of my Tivo experiences is South Park. I have always hated the show, but my 15 year old son loves it. So I watched the recent episode about the Mohammad Cartoons. It was great, except for the gratuitous language. Now I see why he likes it so much. There are more jokes about private parts than I would care to hear, but they really nailed the issue of the refusal of big media to publish the cartoons. Listen to this excerpt from South Park, where a town hall meeting is called to decide what to do about a TV show that is planning to show a cartoon of Mohammad on national TV. What do the citizens decide to do about this exercise of free speech? Listen and enjoy.

Play clip.

That's it for now, podcatchers. Signing off from Salt Lake City this morning.