Cursor's Media Patrol - 12/19/05

President Bush used a live radio address on Saturday to confirm that he authorized domestic wiretaps without warrants, and in a Monday morning press conference he called the disclosure of the ongoing program "a shameful act" and provoked Reuters to ask, 'What's in a name?'

In response to Bush "hotly insisting that he was working within the Constitution and the law" the New York Times editorializes that "Mr. Bush's team cannot be trusted to find the boundaries of the law, much less respect them."

The Christian Science Monitor reports that 'Congress pushes back, hard, against Bush,' after being "blindsided by news of domestic spying," while the attorney general claims that Congress authorized it.

A "still growing" Pentagon counterterrorism agency is said to represent "the increasing militarization of our American streets," and to offer training in how to "use psychological research to create public policy."

A UCLA press release touting a study of media bias, said to have found that "the Drudge Report ... leans left," is called "one of the slickest pieces of right-wing propaganda to come down the pike in years" by Sid's Fishbowl, which looks at the study's authors and their right-wing funding.