Crooks and Liars has a good assortment of videos up today:

• Bill O'Reilly on David Letterman, not getting the appreciation he expected. Transcript is here.

• James Risen on the Today Show talking about his book that exposes the warrantless NSA electronic monitoring.

• Jack Murtha on Nightline discussing the military and how he would not join today.

The new law blog at the Wall St. Journal reported Monday that Ana Marie Cox will be leaving Wonkette and replaced by David Lat, the male prosecutor who authored Underneath Their Robes pretending to be a female named Article Three Groupie. Lat has left his job with the U.S. Attorney's office in Newark to write Wonkette.

As I wrote here, count me as underwhelmed. The few times I read Underneath Their Robes, Lat was praising conservative judges to the hilt. His favorite word was "hottie." I'll try to give him a chance, but if he turns Wonkette into a praise machine for conservatives, I'm done.

Ana Marie confirms the arrangement today in the Washington Post. I'll miss her voice in the blogosphere. Good luck to Ana Marie, I hope your new book Dog Days, is a great seller.

Say hello to the new Wall Street Journal Law Page, and its new law blog, written by Peter Lattman, formerly a journalist with Forbes and before that a lawyer. It looks very promising. The new law page is available only to subscribers, and I'm not sure if the law blog is free or not. However, it includes free links to some of the Journal's regular articles.

The Journal explains the additions here.

Today, WSJ.com introduces its new Law Page, covering law, business and the business of law. We will be writing about news, trends and buzz for lawyers at firms and in-house law departments, as well as the business people who work with them.

There's a funny article today (free link) on boxing promotor Don King, who has rehired his former lawyer and nemesis, Judd Bernstein, to represent him in a lawsuit filed against one of Bernstein's former clients. Conflict issues apparently will be resolved by the court.

The acrimony between the two has been so intense over the years that Mr. Burstein once referred to the promoter as a "cancer" on boxing. Mr. King described Mr. Burstein as an "insidious insect.

The New York Times has an article today about journalists and bloggers. It goes on for three pages, and if there's a central theme, I'm not getting it. On the other hand, Jane of Firedoglake does an excellent job of taking the basics of the article and expanding it into what it is that blogs really do, vis a vis the mainstream media.

...bloggers serve the function of analysts. Or re-analyzers, more aptly, who attempt to contextualize as they sort through available data and look for patterns, inconsistencies and greater truths.

....From our standpoint we're trying to come up with new ideas and theories as we try to sort through the available information and expose the systemic bias from which it comes. We're not afraid to be wrong in our speculations, nor are we afraid to interact with people who like to think along side us.

If there's a better description, I haven't seen it. Way to go, Jane.

Update: Digby adds context, Jane heartily agrees in an update.

Last week, Newsweek's Jonathan Alter revealed that the White House leaned on the New York Times not to run its article on warrantless surveillance by the National Security Agency. The Times sat on the story for a year. Alter says,

We’re seeing clearly now that Bush thought 9/11 gave him license to act like a dictator, or in his own mind, no doubt, like Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War.

Howard Kurtz reports in today's Washington Post that White House officials, including John Negroponte and Porter Goss, met with Executive Publisher Leonard Downie and made a similar request over Dana Priest's article on secret CIA prisons. While Leonard Downie won't confirm the meetings, other sources do:

Just go watch.

Share the link, and Happy Holidays to all.

The end-of-year list season has officially opened with Arianna's list of things she'd like to forget. My favorites:

That there is a debate about whether waterboarding is actually torture.

Judy Miller, Bob Woodward, Viveca Novak: The Three Media Stooges of Plamegate

That Bush waited five days before visiting the Gulf following Katrina. And that once he got there, he joked about his hard-partying days, congratulated Mike Brown on doing a, and promised to rebuild Trent Lott’s house.

There's something for everyone in her list.

by TChris

It's good to see the AP calling out the president when he fails to tell the country the rest of the story.

President Bush is making selective use of an opinion poll when he tells people that Iraqis are increasingly upbeat.

The same poll that indicated a majority of Iraqis believe their lives are going well also found a majority expressing opposition to the presence of U.S. forces, and less than half saying Iraq is better off now than before the war.

The AP also notes the president's dismissive attitude toward polls that tell him things he doesn't want to hear (like the percentage of Americans who think he's doing a lousy job) -- an attitude that makes it odd for him to embrace (albeit selectively) a poll of Iraqis.

Time Magazine has chosen U-2's Bono and Bill and Melinda Gates as persons of the year:

For being shrewd about doing good, for rewiring politics and re-engineering justice, for making mercy smarter and hope strategic and then daring the rest of us to follow, Bill and Melinda Gates and Bono are TIME's Persons of the Year.

Michelle Malkin thinks it's a lame choice.

And, sorry, but Melinda Gates? She marries the software mogul after he has done his greatest work...and that makes her a co-person of the year.

How mean-spirited to suggest that Melinda Gates is being honored for being married to her husband as opposed to the thousands of hours she spends working on the Foundation. Michelle needs to do a little research on Melinda Gates' contributions in creating and co-running the largest philanthropic organization in America, one that is dedicated to reducing world poverty, saving lives by discovering global health cures and providing educational opportunities for children in our own country.

What greater work could there be?

Update: TV Newser reports Novak has been signed by Fox to be a contributor. Think Progress commenters called it.

*******
Romanesko has a copy of CNN's Statement advising that Bob Novak is leaving the network.

"After 25 years of serving as a CNN commentator and program host, our colleague Bob Novak's tenure on the network will come to a close (effective 12/31). Through the years, Bob has offered incisive analysis for much of CNN's programming, including Crossfire, The Capital Gang, Inside Politics, Evans and Novak, The Novak Zone, and Novak, Hunt and Shields. Bob has also been a valued contributor to CNN's political coverage. We appreciate his many contributions and wish him well in future endeavors," said Jon Klein, president of CNN/U.S.

Media Matters delivered 5,000 signatures on a petition last week calling for his termination. They argued:

Like thousands of others, I've been confused about whether to get XM or Sirius or neither. I've been leaning towards XM, and then I stop and ask myself what do I need either for? I can listen to Air America on local radio, I don't spend that much time in the car, and I can watch the news on cable. But I think I just found my reason, and my network.

Legendary folk rocker Bob Dylan will start a new career as a radio DJ when he launches a new weekly music show on XM Satellite Radio next March.... "Dylan will offer regular commentary on music and other topics, host and interview special guests including other artists and will take emails from XM subscribers," XM said.

While the New York Times Magazine touts the effectiveness of conservative blogs, the LA Times Magazine writes about the liberal blogs "truth squad" and profiles John Amato of Crooks and Liars.

For political junkies, must-see TV once meant sitting through hours of "Crossfire," "Hannity & Colmes" and "Meet the Press," hoping for the occasional gem. Nowadays, to catch Robert Novak turning the air blue on "Inside Politics" or work yourself into an apoplectic lather over our politicians' latest truth-challenged utterances, you can point your browser to Crooks and Liars , the brainchild of 47-year-old West L.A. musician and liberal-Democrat John Amato. Since last fall, he has been serving up political dish from a decidedly blue-state perspective with daily posts of video and audio streams. Amato, who turned to blogging after an injury scotched his saxophone career during a hiatus from a reunion tour with Duran Duran, currently is receiving between 100,000 and 200,000 hits on the site per day and has even done a few original interviews. We pried him away from his computer for questions from the mainstream media.