CAN I GET AN AMEN?

Cal Thomas nails it, taking the media to task for their agenda based questions at a rare Presidential news conference. Read it all.

Can anyone imagine reporters during World War II asking President Franklin Roosevelt if he'd like to apologize for the number of American dead and wounded, or Harry Truman if he'd like to repent for dropping bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which forced Japan to surrender?

Those were different times - when ''psycho'' meant you were crazy and ''babble'' meant you didn't make any sense. Both psycho and babble were on display at President Bush's April 13 news conference. Four times, by my count, reporters tried to get the president to admit he had done something wrong. What they really wanted was a huge headline: ''President Admits Fault for 9/11,'' or even better (from their perspective), ''President Admits Mistakes in Iraq War.''...

Reporters haven't asked Democratic presidential candidate Kerry to apologize or admit error for any of his votes in the Senate. I guess he doesn't have to because on this war, as well as on so many other issues, he voted on both sides, so he can claim he was right at least once.

The presidential news conference is necessary so the public can see and hear George W. Bush, unfiltered by some of these same sound-bite journalists who care more about how they look than about what the president says. But it is frustrating - to the public as well as the president - that in serious times too many in the media continue to play ''gotcha'' games.

Cal appears weekly on one of my favorite TV shows, Fox News Watch. And I recall many years ago my father showed me a column by Cal in the Greenville News...and noted that Cal was one of only a handful of columnists being published who were not hindered by their Christian/conservative credentials.

(Thanks, Beth)