1. And Iowa remains a dead heat as Obama has gained ground.
2. Meanwhile, the latest Suffolk University/WHDH-TV poll in New Hampshire has Her lead slipping six percentage points down to 34-22.
3. The latest Clemson University Palmetto Poll has her lead sinking seven percentage points in South Carolina and she is now in a near dead heat with Obama at 19-17.

Hillary… is it time to bring in the Big Gun?

Sad you don’t seem to be able to pull this off on your own merits and credentials.

CNN can spare us the alibis for letting Democratic operatives slip past them as questioners in this week’s Republican debate. The Hillary Rodham Clinton News Network may be as dishonest as it is slanted.

All it took was a Web search to figure out that the supposedly independent retired Brig. Gen. Keith Kerr, whose video question for the candidates was chosen by CNN for the GOP YouTube debate, was a co-chairman of a Clinton campaign organization.

Yet after CNN’s Anderson Cooper innocently announced "another question from a YouTube viewer. Let’s watch," came a gravelly voice right out of George C. Scott’s portrayal of Gen. George Patton, as Kerr rattled off his biographical data.

"I’m a retired brigadier general with 43 years of service, and I’m a graduate of the Special Forces Officer Course, the Command and General Staff Course, and the Army War College," Kerr said. "And I’m an openly gay man."

What Kerr — and Cooper — left out of his resume was not only that Kerr was this month named to a top spot in "Veterans and Military Retirees for Hillary," according to a press release from her campaign, but that he was also on the National Veterans Steering Committee of Sen. John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign.

Kerr’s question was designed to make the more socially conservative Republicans look bad — and indeed those were exactly the candidates (California Rep. Duncan Hunter, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney — two Baptists and a Mormon) directed by Cooper to answer it.

"I want to know," Kerr asked, "why you think that American men and women in uniform are not professional enough to serve with gays and lesbians."

Hunter and Huckabee stood by their opposition to an openly homosexual military, while Romney looked uncomfortable as Cooper reminded him that in the 1990s he was against "don’t ask, don’t tell."

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I wrote a piece for the NYPost published today on CNN’s horticultural journalism (reprinted below). Filed it before we learned about the CAIR intern. CNN host Howard Kurtz quotes CNN senior veep David Bohrman bleating that they “bent over backwards to be fair.” I quote him below, too. Glenn Reynolds notes that CNN used Google…to buy plane tickets for Plant Number One Keith Kerr and other questioners.

Which ones, I wonder?

I’ll be talking about the debacle this morning on Fox and Friends around 8:15am. (Update - Video here.)

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IF any more political plants turn up at CNN’s presidential debates, the cable-news network will have to merge with the Home and Garden channel.

At CNN’s Democratic debate in Las Vegas two weeks back, moderator Wolf Blitzer introduced several citizen questioners as “ordinary people, undecided voters.” But they later turned out to include a former Arkansas Democratic director of political affairs, the president of the Islamic Society of Nevada and a far left anti-war activist who’d been quoted in newspapers lambasting Harry Reid for his failure to pull out of Iraq.

Yet CNN failed to disclose those affiliations and activism during the broadcast.

Behold - the phony political foliage bloomed again at Wednesday night’s much hyped CNN/YouTube GOP debate.

Oh, CNN did make careful note that Grover Norquist (who asked about his anti-tax pledge) is a Republican activist with Americans for Tax Reform. But somehow the network’s layers and layers of fact-checkers missed several easily identified Democratic activists posing as ordinary, undecided citizens.

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I took to calling CNN "the most busted name in news" during the Eason Jordan meltdown in early 2005.  Since then it has grown addicted to Lou Dobbs’ pseudopopulism while maintaining an hilariously lefty attitude towards most news.  The networks two best talents, Wolf Blitzer and Anderson Cooper, are surrounded by a cast of agenda-journalists who, like Penelope unweaving her tapestry each night,  undo each day all the good work that Blitzer and Cooper attempt to accomplish.  CNN isn’t a cartoon network, but a network of cartoon figures like Jack Cafferty and Dobbs pretending to be objective journalists. Now we have proof positive that the backroom producers are as biased as Cafferty and Dobbs.

Last night’s fiasco was so thorough that it will take a while to settle in just how damaging it was to CNN’s reputation as a news organization.  From the awful judgment displayed with the opening guitar serenade through the preposterous selection of topics and questions right to the stark reality that CNN either was easily and completely manipulated by the Dems with planted question after planted question or were totally complicit in the hijacking of a Republican debate designed to serve Republican primary voters about who ought to be the Republican nominee.  The network is either incompetent in a way no serious news organization should be, or wholly captured by agenda journalists of the left.

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Sen. Hillary Clinton was put on the defense by questions linking her campaign to retired Brig Gen. Keith Kerr, whose question on gays in the military briefly electrified last night’s Republican debate. Following the CNN/YouTube debate, moderator Anderson Cooper announced that bloggers were claiming that Kerr served on Clinton’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender steering committee, and quickly apologized for including his question.

Clinton’s campaign hotly denied that the question, posed in a YouTube video, was a “plant” by the campaign. “We didn’t do this, we had nothing to do with this guy, he was acting on his own,” spokesman Phil Singer said in an interview. Singer said he expected questions about the incident from “right-wing bloggers,” but not from news outlets as worthy as this one.

“There’s nothing here,” he added.

Kerr said he didn’t ask the question on the Clinton campaign’s behalf in a CNN interview this morning. He said he had only lent his name to the campaign and hadn’t given it any money. “This was a private initiative,” he said of his question. Still, it was an unwelcome diversion for the New York senator and Democratic front-runner as she heads into the final weeks before the Iowa caucus.

Kerr asked on video why the candidates thought that “American men and women in uniform are not professional enough to serve with gays and lesbians.” After answers by Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee, Kerr, who was in the audience, was handed a CNN microphone and invited to comment on their response.

“With all due respect, I did not get an answer from the candidates,” he said to applause. Sen. John McCain of Arizona then joined the debate, saying that military officers believe the current don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy is working, setting off some rancorous exchanges.

Minutes after the debate ended, Cooper announced that bloggers were emailing to tell them that Kerr has worked for the Clinton campaign. Singer confirmed that the general is part of a campaign advisory board, but said he isn’t “employed” by the campaign and wasn’t acting for the campaign last night.

Source: Wall Street Journal

Great interview!

If you are not reading Hot Air or Michelle Malkin daily you are missing out!

Sen. John McCain said this morning that CNN should have made clear that a retired general who asked a question in last night’s Republican debate about homosexuals in the military works for Hillary Rodham Clinton.

"I think that should have been revealed," the Arizona senator said. "I think that should have been made public if this individual was a member of another — any other campaign, then people would, obviously, have a better way of judging the quality of the question."

Retired Brig. Gen. Keith H. Kerr was named a co-chairman of Mrs. Clinton’s National Military Veterans group this month, according to a campaign press release. He asked a question last night at the CNN-YouTube debate here, and after answers from candidates, debate host Anderson Cooper asked the general if he was satisfied with the answers.

The general then stood up and delivered what amounted to a two-minute speech, stopping only when the audience of 1,500 booed.

"American men and women in the military are professional enough to serve with gays and lesbians. For 42 years, I wore the army uniform on active duty, in the Reserve, and also for the state of California. I revealed I was a gay man after I retired," the general said.

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Apparently, CNN’s latest efforts for their Democrat masters involved stacking the Republican debate with questions from full-time Democrat activists.

According to internet research as compiled by Michelle Malkin and others, they so far include:

“Concerned Undecided Mom” LeeAnn Anderson, who is an activist for the John Edwards-endorsing United Steelworkers union.

“Concerned Undecided Log Cabin Republican” David Cercone, who is an avowed Barack Obama supporter.

“Concerned Undecided Young Person” “Journey,” who is an avowed John Edwards supporter.

“Concerned Undecided Young Farmer” (from Manhattan Beach, CA) Ted Faturos, who is a former intern for Democrat Congresswoman Jane Harman.

“Concerned Undecided Young Black Man” David McMillan, who is an avowed Republican hater and John Edwards supporter.

And lastly but not leastly, this mother of all ringers, “Concerned Undecided Retired General” Keith H. Kerr:

Mr. Kerr is in fact a top Hillary Clinton supporter who is even on her Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered “steering committee.” (Which, as we noted previously, is headed by Hillary’s Wellesley roommate, Eldie Acheson.)

Mr. Kerr is also a member of the Veterans and Military Retirees for Hillary Committee.

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