The venom bubbling below the visible anger of MSNBC’s three nightly hosts —  Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow — was unmistakable after President Obama’s speech, in which he praised former President Bush and the brave troops who gave their all to get us to this point.

For those like Matthews, Olbermann and Maddow, President Obama’s admission is a defeat for their network, which spent the last seven years of Operation Iraqi Freedom seeking to undermine the mission there through hearsay, spin, lies and general misinformation. Olbermann and Maddow, who have basically built their careers by fanning the flames of the public discontent, were visibly shaken; they had once proudly professed that Iraq was a lost effort from the start, yet through it all the fine men and women of the military, some giving life and limbs, were able to secure victory and thus spell the leftists’ defeat.

The venom rest in the fact that President Obama, a President many of them feel they help get elected, would praise the former President Bush – whom Olbermann and Maddow detest to his core — would receive public praise from one of their own for standing behind those troops that lead the surge efforts in Iraq. (more…)

JIM LEHRER: Good evening.  President Obama returned to the Gulf Coast for an hour this afternoon to comfort a pelican that lost its mate during the recent unimaginable ecological catastrophe selfishly caused by private enterprise.  He also quaffed a quart of seawater to quash rumors Gulf water is unsafe to drink.  Aides said the small tar ball he coughed up later was harmless.

JEFFREY BROWN:  On the NewsHour tonight:

Homeless pet population explodes as the Bush Recession lingers.

Disney World shifts operations to Martha’s Vineyard for First Family’s stay.

And finally, Washington Post Associate Editor Bob Woodward talks with Judy Woodruff about his informant in the West Wing.

LEHRER:  Forget the lineup, Jeff.  Let’s hear about the mole.  Judy, you start.

WOODRUFF:  Thanks, Jim.  Carl, how long have you cultivated this source?

WOODWARD:  Uh, it’s Bob, Judy.  Without getting specific, since January I’ve met this person the first Thursday of every month at 6:00 p. m. in a stall in the women’s restroom at a Starbucks half a block east of the State Department.  Each time she’s given me a carry-on bag stuffed with copies of top-secret memoranda, policy drafts, and audio tapes and transcripts of strategy meetings

WOODRUFF:  Her code name?

WOODWARD:  “Deep Tote.” (more…)

Ron Brynaert has a story over at his The Raw Story blog that reveals yet another denizen of the Old Media trying to be both a “journalist” and an operative of Barack Obama’s administration. She is Patricia McGinnis, an unpaid advisor at the White House and also one of the contributors to the Post’s “On Leadership” blog.

Once again we see the Old Media working hand-in-hand with the Obama administration and putting the lie to the idea of the “independent journalist” in traditional media outlets, this time with the Washington Post. Even worse than this collusion, though, is the fact that the Post somehow forgot to inform its readers of this little detail.

Is anybody surprised? From the “Cry Wolf” scandal, in which Big Journalism exposed an incipient pay-for-play “independent scholarship” racket that was designed to combat conservative ideas under the false flag of “academic research,” to the constant revolving door of “journalists” leaving their publications or networks for their first love, Democrat politics, to the existence of Ezra Klein’s “JournoList,” an email daisy chain of 400 leftist journalists, operating in secret to share policy ideas and hone talking points without letting either their readers or, in many cases, their employers know of their collusion, it’s clear that the leftist drones in academe and the media no longer feel the need even to pretend to be objective reporters of the political scene. They are operatives, plain and simple.

Think of them as an army of Walter Durantys, the Soviet fellow-traveler operating as a correspondent for the New York Times who won a Pulitzer Prize for whitewashing Stalin’s crimes for western public opinion. (more…)