Jennifer Aniston appeared on Thursday’s Good Morning America and slammed Bill O’Reilly for "insulting women." The actress, promoting "The Switch," her new film about being a single mother, complained about remarks by the Fox News host.

Aniston derided, "[The comments were] also saying something – insulting women that are out there doing this on their own. I was raised by – my mother was single. You know?" [MP3 audio here.]

In fact, O’Reilly, on his August 11 program, did not "insult" single mothers. He went out of his way to respect such moms: "I want to be fair about this, because there have- there are many- there are millions of single mothers who do a great job raising their kids."

What the FNC anchor did do was praise the importance of fathers: "Aniston can hire a battery of people to help her, but she cannot hire a dad…And Dads bring a psychology to children that is, in this society, I believe, under emphasized. I think men get hosed all day long in the parental arena."

On Thursday’s Situation Room, CNN’s Jack Cafferty questioned the motives of the planners behind the proposed New York City mosque near Ground Zero: "The developer… has said the proximity of the planned mosque and center is not an issue. Really?…It’s simply unrealistic to think you can build a Muslim house of worship two blocks from where this awful thing happened, and not get a negative reaction."

Cafferty raised the mosque controversy during his 5 pm Eastern hour commentary: "Sometimes no answer can be an answer. When asked if a portion of the $100 million needed to build the mosque and Islamic community center near Ground Zero here in New York City might come from either Saudi Arabia or Iran, the developers refused to comment. This only adds to the already heated controversy surrounding this project."

Here’s how the Associated Press’s Martin Crutsinger and Daniel Wagner reported the housing portion of their Tuesday report on the day’s economic news ("Factories aid bumpy recovery, housing still weak"):

Single-family home construction, which represented nearly 80 percent of the market, fell 4.2 percent. And requests for building permits, considered a good sign of future activity, slid 3.1 percent.

… The July increase in housing construction pushed total activity to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 546,000 units. Building activity in June was weaker than first reported. It fell 8.7 percent to an annual rate of 537,000 units, the slowest pace since October of last year.

"The bad news is that activity is likely to remain depressed for several years," said Paul Ashworth, senior U.S. economist at Capital Economics. "The good news, however, is that housing is so depressed it is hard to see activity falling much further from such a severely depressed level."

It was deceptive. At a White House dinner with Muslims celebrating Ramadan, Barack Obama finally weighed in on the Ground Zero mosque controversy. Incredibly, he lectured Americans about the religious freedom of Muslims “that includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in Lower Manhattan.”

Those were prepared remarks, a clear and very deliberate effort to skirt the issue. But this time, it was blatantly sophomoric, too.

Of course there is a legal “right.” That doesn’t make it the right thing to do. After causing an instant national uproar, Obama saw the need to flinch. The next day, he suddenly announced to CNN that “I was not commenting and I will not comment on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there.”

Dan Harris, who last year gave credence, by including their attacks in his stories, to those who wished to discredit the Tea Party as “actually largely orchestrated by people fronting for corporate interests” and smeared participants as “driven, in part, by a refusal to accept a black President,” on Monday night read from the same playbook in maligning the motivations of those opposed to building a mosque near Ground Zero.

Harris began his World News story with “how this issue is creeping into campaigns all over the country” and “today conservatives were turning up the volume against the planned Muslim community center.” He soon arrived at:

Muslim activists say angry rhetoric is fueling a dangerous level of Islamophobia with protests over proposed mosques in places like Tennessee and Wisconsin, the bombing of a mosque in Jacksonville, Florida, in May, and a church in Gainesville, Florida, that’s now planning to burn Korans on September 11th.

As President Obama headed to the Florida Panhandle for a vacation with the family, he felt the need to drag his teleprompter along (h/t Freedom’s Lighthouse):

Swimsuit? Check. Sunscreen? Got it. Insect repellent? Yep. Teleprompter? Teleprompter?  

Jim Pinkerton on Saturday cited a Culture and Media Institute article about the hypocritical reporting of the proposed Ground Zero mosque.

On Thursday, CMI’s Alana Goodman noted in a piece cross-posted at sister site NewsBusters:

Ground Zero mosque organizer Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf has been described by the media as a "moderate" and a "bridge-builder." But not too long ago, the same news outlets gave identical labels to a radical Virginia mosque that has been linked to some of the most infamous Islamic terrorist attacks in recent years. 

When the discussion on Saturday’s "Fox News Watch" moved to the Ground Zero mosque, Pinkerton brought this up (video follows with transcript): 

JON SCOTT, HOST: Jim, the host of "Red Eye" here on Fox, Greg Gutfeld, kind of a comedy show, says he wants to open a gay bar across the street from this Islamic mosque and promote positive dialog. Now, a spokesman for the Islamic center said this, this plan does not consider the sensibilities of Muslims. Did the mainstream media pick up on the irony there?

File the news in this report filed late yesterday afternoon by Michael Calderone and John Cook at Yahoo’s Upshot Blog under "D" for Double Standards:

White House reporters mum on Obama lunch, even as papers back transparency

White House reporters are keeping quiet about an off-the-record lunch today with President Obama — even those at news organizations who’ve advocated in the past for the White House to release the names of visitors.

But the identities of the lunch’s attendees won’t remain secret forever: Their names will eventually appear on the White House’s periodically updated public database of visitor logs.

… The Obama White House began posting the logs in order to settle a lawsuit, begun under the Bush administration, from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), which sought the Secret Service’s White House visitor logs under the Freedom of Information Act.

From our friends at Reason.tv:

Question: Are lawmakers in Sacramento really putting the interests of the big labor ahead of children’s health?

Dan Rostenkowski (?-Ill), 1928-2010. Reporting the passing of Dan Rostenkowski, the ABC and NBC anchors on Wednesday night managed to gently note his ignominious departure from public life while also including a humanizing anecdote about his life (NBC: He “went back to live in the same house he grew up in in Chicago’s north side,” ABC: “In 1985, he famously asked Americans fed up with the tax system to write him”), but neither identified him as a Democrat. Nor did any on-screen graphic mark his party.

In contrast, filling in as anchor of the CBS Evening News, Erica Hill managed to accurately describe the late Congressman as “a product of Chicago’s Democratic political machine.”

Handling the anchor duties on ABC’s World News, George Stephanopoulos, a Democratic House staff member when Rostenkowski was at the zenith of his power, announced: