Hindrocket at Power Line found a new ABC initiative to bring balance to its news broadcasts, or at least those they intend to provide on Inauguration Day tomorrow. Obviously, the Halperin Memo is still in effect even past Election Day:

For a possible Inauguration Day story on ABC News, we are trying to find out if there any military funerals for Iraq war casualties scheduled for Thursday, Jan. 20.

If you know of a funeral and whether the family might be willing to talk to ABC News, please fill out the form below[.]

So here we have a public broadcaster who explicitly intends on using the death of at least one American serviceperson -- specifically in Iraq, so dead American soldiers or Marines in Kosovo or Afghanistan need not apply -- as a means to make a political statement about Bush's inauguration. If your son or daughter, sister or brother, or friend or neighbor isn't lucky enough to be buried on January 20th, don't bother applying, because ABC and Disney won't give a rat's ass about him or her.

The sheer chutzpah and shallowness doesn't surprise me as much as the laziness that this demonstrates. It's not enough that some bloodsucking leech wants to use the grief of some poor family as entertainment and political theater. They are too freakin' lazy to go out and find one themselves, so they want someone to get them an invitation to the funeral.

Whoever posted this at ABC needs a soul transplant. Disgusting.

UPDATE: ABC has apparently taken down the web page, as the link above now takes me to an error page for their site. Fortunately, I archived it to my site here.

UPDATE II: My link is fixed now. It doesn't display very pretty, but if you scroll down about halfway, you'll see the bleg.

UPDATE III: Welcome, Instapundit readers!

UPDATE IV: Jonathan Last notes the issue at the Weekly Standard, and gives me a nice reference.