New Evidence of Liberal News Reporting Bias for Wonderboy

During the last presidential campaign, there was unquestionably a bias in the conventional broadcast and print, and most online media, in favor of Obama. Certainly editorials favored him, but many suspected that news coverage was also slanted in his direction. But evidence was lacking of explicit intent and perhaps even collaboration.

Then came the leaked Journolist blog information earlier this week. John Fund wrote about it in Wednesday's Wall Street Journal's Notable & Quotable,


"From 2007 until last month, some 300 liberal journalists and policy wonks exchanged ideas and commentary on a secret, off-the-record Internet email group called JournoList. It was shut down after portions leaked, leading to the resignation of Washington Post writer David Weigel last month over his intemperate criticism of conservatives he was covering.

But someone who belonged to JournoList continues to leak information from its archives, providing a fascinating glimpse into how some liberal journalists coordinate their story lines to protect their favorite politicians and ideas. The Daily Caller website reports that at several times during the 2008 presidential race, "employees of news organizations including Time, Politico, the Huffington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Guardian, Salon and the New Republic participated in outpourings of anger over how [Barack] Obama had been treated in the media, and in some cases plotted to fix the damage."


Some of the comments will no doubt revive conservative allegations of a liberal news media conspiracy. Spencer Ackerman, then of the Washington Independent, now at Wired, urged fellow journalists to kill the story of Mr. Obama's ties to the controversial Revered Jeremiah Wright by going after some of his critics. "Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares—and call them racists," he urged. "What is necessary is to raise the cost on the right of going after the left. In other words, find a rightwinger's [sic] and smash it through a plate-glass window. Take a snapshot of the bleeding mess and send it out in a Christmas card to let the right know that it needs to live in a state of constant fear. Obviously I mean this rhetorically."

Chris Hayes of the Nation magazine urged "those in the ostensible mainstream media" who were on the list to ignore the Rev. Wright story. He insisted the real issue had nothing to do with Mr. Obama's pastor and instead "has everything to do with the attempts of the right to maintain control of the country."

Apparently, many on JournoList had an agenda that had little to do with covering legitimate news stories, but instead were concerned with protecting their friends and trying to ensure they had "control of the country."


So much for Thomas Jefferson's preference for newspapers without a government, rather than the converse.

The Shirley Sherrod Affair

The Shirley Sherrod affair seems to have become one of those uniquely summertime stories which gain so much traction in the lull of the hot summer vacation months.

Except that there's actually quite a bit still going on this summer.

How to begin to tackle this story? Here's the video clip of Glenn Beck airing the Brightbart video clip for the first time, on Tuesday evening, then explaining the administration action, and then...the full context.



I guess the best way to view this whole mess is that many wrongs result in, well, a mess.

Over two decades ago, Shirley Sherrod engaged in racist behavior toward a white farming family. Later, feeling guilty about it, she made amends to the aggrieved party.

She spoke about this at an NAACP conference, it became public, and the administration pressured the Agriculture Secretary to fire Sherrod, without any knowledge of how long ago her apparent transgression occurred, or that it was actually just the first part of a larger story of redemption. Sherrod resigned under pressure, as desired by the administration, in its haste to cleanse itself of what it believed would be a racist burden.

But, for her part, upon having all of this aired, Sherrod steadfastly refused all invitations from Fox News to appear on any of their programs. Fox's Bret Baier read a quote from Sherrod, given in an interview to another media outlet, in which she berated Fox for wanting to turn the clock back on integration and see blacks as second-class citizens once more.

It turns out that Sherrod is very liberal, perhaps fully socialist, with a lot of activism in her past, including suing her employer, a government agency.

The whole situation is quite a mess. But it's clear that Wonderboy acted quickly, and, as usual, without complete knowledge of the situation, to distance himself from an apparent racist situation. As did the NAACP.

The final chapters to this, unfolding yesterday, were that Wonderboy's mouthpieces and the network and print media were casting themselves as victims, claiming that Fox News misled everyone, and is the real villain in the matter.

Nevermind that the person Sherrod mentioned as being feared by Wonderboy's minions, Glenn Beck, didn't even air the material on the day they expected. And, in fact, defended Sherrod.

You can't make this stuff up, can you?

Come Next January......

While having lunch the other day with another conservative and long-time friend and work colleague, we found ourselves discussing the possibility of the Republicans retaking both the House and the Senate.

One thing was immediately obvious to both of us which, sadly, probably won't happen. We felt that neither John Boehner, currently House Minority Leader, nor Mitch McConnell, currently Senate Minority Leader, should be allowed to assume the position of leader of his chamber, should the GOP take either one back. In Boehner's case, that would mean denying him the post of Speaker of the House.

It seemed relatively simple to my friend and me. Anybody in leadership when the party lost the majority in a chamber can't be allowed to resume leadership if/when they get it back.

Only the 'inside baseball' players in the party's Congressional caucuses would miss the reason for this. That is, if someone is associated with the party's loss of a chamber, it is folly to let him or her resume leadership in what is supposed to be a new period of the party's empowerment.

Most voters are neither hard-core Democrats, nor Republicans. I believe the plurality of voters aren't even registered with either party. Thus, the face of leadership of either party in the House or Senate majority is primarily to those who aren't of the party.

That's why recycling the perennially artificially-tanned Boehner or the inept McConnell would be a big mistake. Why not announce, a priori, that they become the majority party, the Republicans will choose new leaders. They don't even have to suggest any nominees, although Eric Cantor and Tom Coburn are obvious candidates.

Call it the Moses Clause. He never crossed the Jordan River into the Promised Land.

Congressional delegations would be wise to adopt this principle in their own affairs when power changes between the parties in the House or Senate.

GOP Traitors: Graham, Snowe, Collins, Brown

Have you seen the latest list of traitorous votes by ostensibly Republican Senators?

The FINREG bill would not have passed, but for three Northeastern US so-called Republicans in the Senate:

-Olympia Snowe, R-ME
-Susan Collins, R-ME
-Scott Brown, R-MA

Then there's the Progressive Republican Senator from South Carolina, Lindsay Graham. He voted in committee for ultra-liberal Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan.

What's with these Senators?

I had lunch with a conservative friend yesterday, and we discussed these turncoats. Both he and I are more independent conservatives than Republicans. So to us, these Senators, and, more importantly, the Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell have displayed a total lack of understanding of the desires and anger of the broad independent middle group of US voters.

If I were McConnell, I'd be shoving these four out of the party if they didn't vote along conservative (party) lines.

What's the benefit of having Snowe, Collins and Brown if they bolt on key legislation. Key bad legislation, at that!

What's Graham doing voting with the liberals for perhaps the most liberal snake ever nominated to the court? A purposely pro-Federalist, anti-States, anti-military nominee.

How'd she even get by the Judicial Committee? Democrats of a bygone era would have quashed her nomination simply on her record of anti-American behaviors and utterances.

Really, does it make any sense to have these liberals allegedly in the GOP camp? Caucusing with them, only to break ranks on the big votes?

Could these Senators get elected as Democrats? Doubtful.

Which brings me to McConnell, about whom, and whose failures, I'll write in an upcoming post.

Sharron Angle's WSJ Interview

Sharron Angle's weekend interview in the Wall Street Journal was very impressive.

Nevermind the false liberal claims that she's a right-wing nutcase who wants to obliterate all of Social Security and the like. Angle is far more rational than that.

My admiration for her escalated when I read of her fight over a tax hike in Arizona. When the state supreme court illegally violated the state's own constitution and overruled the legislature to validate the take increase, Angle went after the court.

At the next election, the members of the court who didn't retire were defeated, and the new court reversed the earlier one's illegal ruling.

Angle fought for what she believed was right, and against blatantly unconstitutional power grabs in her state.

How can you not like someone like that?

I've been very disappointed with Scott Brown, to whose campaign I contributed. I've consoled friends that at least he's better than Martha Coakley would have been.

But I don't think I'll have any regrets sending financial support to Sharron Angle's campaign to dethrone Harry Reid. And I will do so.