Congressional Comments Overlooked?

Now some fresh pickings from the Political Grapevine:

Congressional Democrats who reported favorably on conditions at Guantanamo Bay (search) after visiting over the weekend received almost no coverage in key mainstream media outlets. Oregon Senator Ron Wyden (search) said, "I feel very good" about prisoner treatment at Guantanamo, Texas Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee (search) said, "We have made progress [there]," and California Congresswoman Ellen Tauscher (search) insisted, "The Gitmo we saw today is not the Gitmo that we heard about even a few years ago."

Wyden's quote made The New York Times today... on page 19; the other remarks were left out. The Washington Post, meanwhile, hasn't reported any of it.

Numbers Up in Some Areas

A new ABC News/Washington Post poll shows that most Americans disapprove of how things are going in Iraq, but the president's numbers have actually gone up in what could be some key areas. According to the poll, 46 percent of Americans now say the war in Iraq was worth fighting, up 5 points from three weeks ago.

And a majority now says the war has contributed to the long-term security of the United States, also up 5 points from three weeks ago. In addition, slightly more Americans now say the U.S. is making good progress in Iraq, but most still disagree. Overall, a slight majority says things are going "badly" in Iraq.

Allen's "Not Interested in 9/11"

Filmmaker Woody Allen (search) says he's "not interested in 9/11" as an artistic subject because — "it's too small, history overwhelms it." In an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel, Allen says, "The history of the world is like: He kills me, I kill him, only with different cosmetics and different castings. So in 2001, some fanatics killed some Americans, and now some Americans are killing some Iraqis. ... And in my childhood, some Nazis killed Jews. ... Political questions, if you go back thousands of years, are ephemeral, not important. History is the same thing over and over again."

Columnist Not So Re’source’ful After All?

The Sacramento Bee (search) says it has now found 43 instances in which the sources — and in many cases subjects — of columns by Diana Griego Erwin (search) cannot be verified. For more than 12 years, Griego Erwin wrote emotional, abstract stories, many about a single person who overcomes adversity. But she resigned in May amid questions over her work.

And since then, the Bee discovered that dozens of the people she wrote about don't show up on voter registration rolls, property records, telephone books, identity databases, or Griego Erwin's phone records. The Bee's executive editor says it "kills us that we can't [verify her sources]."

— FOX News' Michael Levine contributed to this report