Over at the Tapped blog, Matthew Yglesias is delighted that "Shrill Bush bashing has crossed over to the section of the media where it really counts: the sports pages. Here's [ESPN football reporter and online columnist] Sal Paolantonio on the Philadelphia Eagles management structure":

More important, no one is fighting for the players on the field. There is a fine line between building a consensus and creating a cabal -- an echo chamber where the tough questions don't get asked because the answers are all the same. (See: Bush White House.)

M.Y. gets a little too excited about the electoral potential with less informed voters based on offhand comments like these, since most of the column fusses about bad Eagles roster decisions:

Friday, January 06, 2006
Will CNN And The MSM Cover This...?

For Immediate Release
Reparation Lawsuit Against The Democratic Party

In the class-action Reparation lawsuit against the Democratic Party, will the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals rule against the Democrats and order them to apologize to African Americans in 2006? In their brief to the Court of Appeals (Case No. 05-35890), Democrats are not denying the fact that their party was behind many of the racist acts that have affected Blacks during the past 200 years. The Democrat's own Political Platforms as well as Congressional Records show that as a party:

Democrats supported Slavery and its expansion into the northern states
Democrats introduced the Missouri Compromise and the Kansas-Nebraska Act to expand slavery into the northern states.
Democrats support of the Dred Scott Decision
Democrats supported Fugitive Slave Laws
Democrats collectively opposed the 13th Amendment to end slavery
Democrats collectively opposed the 14th Amendment to give blacks citizenship
Democrats collectively opposed the 15th Amendment to give blacks the right to vote
Democrats exhausted every efforts to destroy Reconstruction including opposing the 1867 Reconstruction Act and coming up with the Compromise of 1877
Democrats opposed the Freedman Bureau
Democrats opposed Senate Bill 60 of 1866 to give blacks 40 acres and mule (It was Democratic President Andrew Johnson that vetoed the Bill.
Democrats supported of the Slaughter House Case
Democrats opposed the 1866 Civil Rights Acts
Democrats opposed the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 and continue to oppose anti-lynching laws up through 1965
Democrats passed a multitude of Jim Crow Legislation
Democrats passed of Black Codes
Democrats establishment of the Ku Klux Klan and other terrorist auxiliaries for their Party to keep blacks in their place
Democrats promoted White Supremacy
Democrats opposed blacks schools and colleges
Democrats supported of Plessy v Ferguson legalizing Segregation
Democrats were against the decision in the case of Brown v Board of Education
Democrats supported, participated and endorsed over 5,000 lynching in states under their control
Democrats opposed to the NAACP and other organization designed to help blacks
Democrats were in opposition to blacks holding political office and drove many from office during Reconstruction with terror and violence
Southern Democrats debated against the passage of the 1964 Civil Right Act
Southern Democrats debated against the passage of 1965 Voting Rights Act
Southern Democrats fought against Affirmative Action
Southern Democrats fought against the integration of Southern schools
Democrats supported and participated in burning down middle class black communities like those in Rosewood, Florida, Wilmington, North Carolina and the Greenwood District (Black Wallstreet) in Tulsa Oklahoma.
Southern Democrats fraudulently took over two million acres of black property according to an investigation by Associated Press.
Democrats in an effort to keep blacks in their place used sadistic torture, terror and violence including: lynching, mutilations, murder, decapitations and beating and burning to death countless number of blacks.

Jennifer Loven of the Associated Press is one of AP's regular reporters covering Mr. Bush and The White House.

She also has an obvious conflict of interest, as her husband, Roger Ballentine, was a senior adviser to John Kerry on energy and environmental issues during the 2004 presidential campaign. Ballentine is currently president of Green Strategies, Inc., an environmental consulting and government relations (read: lobbying) firm. He also continues to be actively involved in the politics of energy and the environment, as this appearance at a renewable energy conference in December 2004 and the promotion for his October appearance on "E&E TV" show.

It has apparently never occurred to AP that her husband's point of view could affect the objectivity of Ms. Loven's reporting, though, as this post at Powerline supplied by me back in September 2004 shows, she went so far as to ridicule a 2002-2003 Bush Administration environmental initiative in one of her "objective" reports using language that parroted her husband's environmental advocacy statements.

Whether it's Iraq, the Joe Wilson charade (a report that led Powerline to call her a "Democrat Operative"), or the economy, Ms. Loven's reports on day-to-day happenings in the administration have been consistently negative and sometimes even hostile. In early December (go to end of post), Ms. Loven just had to respond to the report of 215,000 new jobs created in October by reminding us (as if it was relevant to the report) that Mr. Bush was " faced with the lowest approval ratings of his presidency." All in all, she may be as close to "Exhibit A" as exists as to why we can no longer trust The Associated Press to do the job it was designed to do: give us the news, straight up -- so spin, no shading.

Ms. Loven continued on her merry antagonistic way Saturday as she reported on the President's Friday speech at The Economic Club of Chicago:

NBC’s Tim Russert invited the New York Times reporter who broke the NSA eavesdropping story three weeks ago onto “Meet the Press” this morning. Despite the obvious controversial nature of the guest and the subject matter, Russert asked no truly compelling or interrogative questions of James Risen, and, as a result, produced an interview that not only didn’t challenge Risen about the fortuitous timing of the article’s release, but also offered the viewer no new information concerning this matter.

For instance, Russert chose to ask Risen:

MR. RUSSERT: Amid much speculation as to why the The New York Times held this story, you had written it, you had finished it, you knew it was—what reflected what your reporting had shown. It may have played a role in the election of 2004 if it had been published in October. Why was it held?

However, here’s a list of potentially more provocative and important questions that Russert chose not to ask his controversial guest:

This morning, CNN ran a report (watch) on the plight of Iraqi parents who can't find emergency care for their very sick children, and how

Sanctions, war, and the insurgency have cripple Iraq's once-exemplary medical care....Now there is only one way to make sure her young patients survive: "They need to go outside of Iraq."

Right. All of which wouldn't have happened except for the US. Saddam's wasting of his country's youth and treasure in constant wars against his neighbors had nothing to do with it. His command economy had nothing to do with it. Prior to the US sanctions and invasion, Iraq was no doubt a medical paradise, with the latest in advanced care universally available with no waiting time.

In the Newsweek Live Chat this week, reporter Richard Wolffe faces the usual Daily Kosmonauts and MoveOn hard cases, but his attempts to land in the sensible center were at times just a little too weak:

Hartford, CT: If Bush is allowed to get away with these illegal spying tactics, plus the Patriot Act infringements on our Privacy and Civil Rights, what is left of Liberty for all? How is America any different than Iraq was under Saddam Hussein?

Richard Wolffe: Well by and large the administration doesn't commit genocide on its own people or torture them. It doesn't fill mass graves or keep rape rooms. So there are quite a few ways in which America is different from Saddam's Iraq.