Power Line links to Michael Barone’s latest column, where he chronicles Old media’s failed attempts to influence the election, and the role the blogosphere played in thwarting them.

Not so today. The ratings of the nightly newscasts have been on a downward trajectory since the 1980 campaign, as voters have been presented with other means of following the news. New Media has emerged: talk radio, Fox News Channel, the proliferation of Internet weblogs, which together make up the blogosphere. The left liberalism that is the political faith of practically all the personnel of Old Media is now being challenged by the various political faiths of New Media. Old Media no longer controls the agenda.

But it tries. At two crucial points in the campaign, Old Media used leaks from dubious sources to run stories intended to hurt the Bush campaign. The first was Dan Rather’s Sept. 8 “60 Minutes” story on Bush’s Texas Air National Guard record based on documents supplied by Texas Bush-hater Bill Burkett. CBS, admirably, posted the documents on its websites, and within 14 hours bloggers – led by frontpage.com, powerlineblog.com and littlegreenfootballs.com – had demonstrated that these purported 1972 documents had been produced on Microsoft Word. CBS’s document experts, it turned out, had refused to authenticate them. Not until Sept. 20 did Rather acknowledge the documents were dubious. The story hurt Rather and CBS, not Bush.

Old media expended a tremendous amount of effort to unseat President Bush, and ultimately, utterly failed, bringing down its own reputation and seriously tarnishing its credibility. Barone touched on this in his previous column:

This year his job rating has hovered around 50 percent or below. He has been the target all year of vicious and biased coverage from old media, many if not most of whose personnel saw their job as removing this scourge from the presidency. The 60 Minutes story about Bush’s Air National Guard service, which was based on obviously forged documents, is only the most egregious example. Old media have headlined violence in Iraq and reported almost nothing about positive developments there; they highlighted the charges of self-promoter Joseph Wilson and spoke nary a word when they were proved bogus; they have given good economic news far less positive coverage, studies show, than they did when Bill Clinton was in office.

Yet the results of this election closely resemble the 2002 House results. Bush beat Kerry 51 to 48 percent; the popular vote for the House appears to be about 51 to 47 percent Republican. Voters knew the stakes–polls showed majorities thought this was an important and consequential election–and both candidates had plenty of opportunity to make their cases. Thanks to the 527s, more money was apparently spent against Bush than for him. So the results cannot be dismissed as an accident. We are now a 51 percent nation, a Republican majority, as, once again in America, love has proved stronger than hate.

This election will be remembered for the citizen journalists in the blogosphere, who kept the public better informed, and brought out stories which otherwise wouldn’t have seen the light of day.

Iran has made a deal with the EU3 (Britain, France and Germany) to suspend its uranium enrichment program. At least for the moment:

The IAEA report said Iran had agreed to suspend the building of centrifuges and the processing of uranium into the gas state that is spun in the centrifuges for enrichment, two activities that Iran previously refused to halt. The gas can be enriched to lower levels for producing electricity or processed into high-level, weapons grade uranium.

Iran underlined on Monday that its suspension would be brief, and that it agreed voluntarily in hopes of building confidence in the world that its nuclear ambitions are peaceful.

“Iran’s acceptance of suspension is a political decision, not an obligation,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said, adding that the suspension was “the best decision under the current circumstances.”

Iran’s top nuclear negotiator Hasan Rowhani said the suspension will last until the completion of negotiations with Europe over Iran’s nuclear program.

I’ll take this with a grain of salt; it’s a move in the right direction, though. But, I wonder if the re-election of a certain President has anything to do with this?

Ann Althouse links to an article with details on the military operation against Fallujah, and plans for the aftermath.

Planning for Fallujah began in September, with Natonski given responsibility for the combat phase, said Lt. Col. Dan Wilson, a Marine planner with the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force.

Wilson said hundreds of other U.S. military and civilian planners designed the overall effort, which is intended to follow the ongoing post-siege rebuilding efforts under way in Najaf.

After troops uproot the insurgents, contractors are supposed to swarm into Fallujah to cart away rubble, repair buildings, and fix the city’s utilities, Wilson and Natonski said.

The Iraqi government has already picked leaders for Fallujah, and thousands of Iraqi police and paramilitary forces have been recruited to try to impose order.

Natonski described the six days of ground war as a “flawless execution of the plan we drew up. We are actually ahead of schedule.”

Several pre-assault tactics made the battle easier than expected, he said.

Insurgent defenses were weakened by bombing raids on command posts and safe houses. Air-dropped leaflets may have also demoralized some defenders and convinced some residents that the city would be better off under government control, he said.

In the days before the raid, ground troops feinted invasions, charging right up to Fallujah’s edge in tanks and armored vehicles. Natonski said these fake attacks forced the insurgents to build up forces in the south and east, perhaps diverting defenders from the north, where six battalions of Army and Marine troops finally punched into the city Monday.

The deceptive maneuvers also drew fire from defenders’ bunkers, which were exposed and relentlessly bombed before the ground assault.

“We desensitized the enemy to the formations they saw on the night we attacked,” Natonski said.

Another key tactic was choking off the city, the responsibility of the 2nd Brigade of the Army’s 1st Cavalry Division, Natonski said.

UPDATE: FoxNews has some more information on Fallujah. It seems the fighting isn’t over and the insurgents are causing trouble elsewhere.

U.S. forces have spread throughout the city although it could take several more days of fighting before the city is secured, American officials said. U.S. forces on Sunday attacked a bunker complex in southern Fallujah where they discovered a network of steel-reinforced tunnels filled with weapons, an anti-aircraft artillery gun, bunk beds, a truck and a suspected weapons cache, according to a statement from the U.S. military.

U.S. aircraft attacked insurgents hiding “in numerous buildings throughout the city,” the statement added.

Fighting in Fallujah was ebbing, but insurgent attacks appeared to escalate elsewhere in Sunni Muslim areas of central and northern Iraq.

Since the election, a debate has been occuring over the presumed chairmanship of the Senate Judiciary Commitee by Arlen Specter. The main opposition to Specter has been from The Corner and RedState, which formed a website called Not Specter. Hugh Hewitt fired back with some rationale for allowing Specter the chairmanship. Now, Senator Spector has written in his own defense.

I am committed, in word and deed, to prompt action by the Judiciary Committee. Last April, I introduced Senate Resolution 327, a protocol to establish prompt action on all judicial nominees. Specifically, my protocol provides that all nominees will have a Judiciary Committee hearing within 30 days of nomination, a Judiciary Committee vote within 30 days of the hearing, and a floor vote 30 days later.

I was also among the first to call for a marathon, round-the-clock debate to draw attention to the Democratic obstruction, which we held in November 2003. I made 17 floor statements to protest Democratic filibusters on nominees including Miguel Estrada and Charles Pickering.

Initially, I supported the cause against Specter. I did so because I felt that, after such a hugh victory by the Republican Party, it would be a retreat to put a moderate Republican in charge of the comittee which oversees judicial nominations, one of the chief legislative battlegrounds these days. I reflected on this for a few days and then read Hugh Hewitt’s perceptive post, I referenced above. Immediately I thought of… Zell Miller. Why is it that Zell Miller spoke out so strongly against the Democratic Party this year? Because he felt that it had no room for voices like his. If conservatives are successful in blocking Specter’s chairmanship, then it will signal the inacceptance of non-conservative thought within the Republian party. And that is something I don’t think is good for the party, and definately not good for the country.

Stones Cry Out has an in-depth roundup of the sides in this debate. And Hugh Hewitt has written his thoughts on the Zell Miller angle.

UPDATE: Captain Ed has some thoughts on what it means to be a majority party.

Michael Medved examines the (almost) insignificant effect Hollywood activists had on the election and offers some advice to Democrats.

Today’s Cox & Forkum cartoon sums up the efforts of the U.S. military in Fallujah.

No it’s not who you think.

CBS News has fired the producer responsible for interrupting the last five minutes of a hit crime drama with a special report on the death of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, a network source said on Friday.

Word of the dismissal came a day after CBS apologized to viewers for breaking into “CSI: NY,” one of its top-rated shows, on Wednesday night.

That’s right. The network that can’t be bothered to investigate, much less fire, its own reporters for broadcasting a “news” report based on phony documents, can decide in less than 48 hours to fire a producer for interrupting a primetime TV show. In CBS’s mixed-up world, you’d better not report on legitimate news if it happens in primetime or risk losing your job. But as long as the news is “fake but accurate,” it’s fit to air in primetime.

Victor Davis Hanson today writes about the challenges that will face George W. Bush in his second term:

Most Americans – in the movies they watch, the TV shows they view, the radio they hear, the abortions they receive, the sexual practices they choose, and the fashion and entertainment they enjoy – do not feel they are straight-jacketed by a Christian fundamentalist society. And yet we are told that the new jihadists are not Islamists, but our own Christians who are implementing a continental-wide red-state Jesusland.

At its richest, most populous stage in its history, the United States, after reeling from a devastating blow to its financial and military nerve centers, in less than three years toppled the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, implemented elections in Afghanistan and scheduled them in Iraq, prevented another 9/11-like attack – and so far has tragically lost about 1,100 in combat in a war against a virulent fascism that is antithetical to every aspect of Western liberty. Our grandfathers would have considered all this a miraculous military achievement. We call it a quagmire, deride our leaders as liars and traitors, and often doubted that our Marines – the greatest street-fighting besiegers in the history of warfare, who stormed Manila, Seoul, Hue, and Panama City – could take Fallujah last April.

George Bush is asked to win the war without losing Americans. He must defeat Islamists, but not kill too many jihadists on global television. His second term must deal with everything from jobs and globalization, energy dilemmas, fickle Europeans, and a war where winning is sometimes seen as losing. Entitlements are out of control, yet his critics don’t want cuts, but rather further increases. In such a topsy-turvy world, all that will see him through are his iron will to stay firm and consistent in face of a global media barrage. He must smile more, keep far quieter, seem much nicer – and carry an even a bigger stick. God help him, because few others will.

Advice for those having trouble dealing with the election results.

Peegy Noonan is happy. I can’t say I blame her.