While researching and writing my book, "Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush," it never ceased to amaze me the amount of extraordinarily bad, lazy and dishonest journalism that's been produced during the Bush years, and produced by what are supposed to be the country's most elite, mainstream news organizations. Amazingly, I think the trend has only intensified since I completed my research and writing in March. The timidity--being afraid of the facts and the consequences of reporting them--is now everywhere you look.

Just take the latest edition of Newsweek currently on newsstands, and specifically just two articles from it (one on liberal Daily Kos and the other on conservative blogger Hugh Hewitt) which manage to embrace everything that's wrong with today's Beltway press corps. (Rule No. 1: GOP up, Dems down.) Let's count the ways.

1. Markos is described as a "rock thrower" and " party-loyalty enforcer," who is filled with "growing belligerence and paranoia" and who last week posted a "berserk" rebuttal to a New Republic hit piece. (Newsweek intentionally plays dumb and describes The New Republic as a "venerable liberal journal." That's the same "venerable liberal journal" that forcefully backed Bush's pre-emptive invasion of Iraq.)