For my money, John Burns of the New York Times is the best war correspondent in the business.

Many on the right harbor all sorts negative viewpoints about the NYT, but the news pages and the editorial pages are very different creatures. I am not saying that NYT news is perfectly unbaised, but it is more fair than, say, Fox News, who puts questions on their screen like "Bush: The Best President Ever?" Burns has been in Iraq for most of the past 4.5 years, and is known for being fair, thorough, diligent, and intelligent.

Burns has an uncanny ability to help his readers understand what is going on in Iraq. For example, I have heard a lot about Iraqis wailing that they were better off under Saddam than now. But Burns debunks this. He says, sure, when you talk to an Iraqi whose family has just been killed by a car bomb, you are going to get that kind of reaction. But when you talk to them when they are calm and rational, the vast, vast majority of them, including Sunnis, feel they owe the US an enormous debt of gratitude for the removal of Saddam.

When General Casey came to run Iraq in June 2004, on his first weekend in the country, he invited Burns and another NYT war correspondent, Dexter Filkins, to lunch. "Gentlemen," Casey said, "Do we have any hope?"

Over the past couple days during lunch, I have watched the recent (56 total minutes) Charlie Rose interview with Burns. (Click on the link and scroll down.) I would highly recommend watching it if you want to gain a better understanding of the enormously complex situation in Iraq.

Rose is also one of the best in the biz, and I couldn't have said it better than Rose does at the end of the interview. Rose says, "John, thank you for helping us to understand the defining event of our time."

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A few days ago, I was listening to NPR and heard a great example of media bias. I am huge fan of NPR--they are fantastic for depth of coverage and interviews, but they are not immune, by any stretch, to media bias.

A reporter was doing a story (not an opinion piece) on the US budget and said that many econmists say that the budget would be balanced now if it wasn't for Bush's tax cuts. And he left it at that, not mentioning that there is a huge debate about this very issue. Phooey! Many, many other mainstream, intelligent economists believe that the tax cuts have been highly stimulative and have led to increased government revenue. Perhaps the best example is the capital gains tax cut; folks that have been waiting for many years to sell appreciated assets have done so in droves, and gross government receipts from capital gains taxes are vastly *higher* with the new lower tax rate than the old rate.

And, when those appreciated assets are sold, the proceeds can be put to use in other productive means such as starting companies that employee people and create more tax revenue for the government.

So there!