Friday’s Washington Post reported that the NAACP has been cleared by the IRS of charges of violating its tax-exempt status with overt partisan advocacy. Reporter Darryl Fears never described the NAACP as a liberal group, instead using a very typical formulation, that they were "the nation's oldest and largest civil rights organization." Fears repeatedly watered down the fiery rhetoric of NAACP speeches, as well as the 2000 commercial where the daughter of dragging-death victim James Byrd claimed then-Gov. George Bush seemed like he was killing her father all over again.

Technically, if we’re not merely defining "civil rights" as the liberal black agenda, the nation’s oldest and largest civil rights organization is the National Rifle Association, fighting for the civil right to bear arms. It’s older and larger than the NAACP.

The liberal blogosphere is going nuts over a miniseries about to air on ABC dealing with 9/11. Why are they so angry? Well, because just as the 9/11 Commission concluded, this program entitled “The Path to 9/11,” chronicles some of the missteps by the Clinton administration that pertain to Osama bin Laden. And, to be sure, folks on the left never want any blame for anything to be given to one of their own.

From what I can uncover, the shouting began at the Democratic Underground on August 27 in a post entitled “ABC docudrama will blame Clinton and Dems for 9/11”:

Robert Christgau, whose title, "the dean of American rock critics," was self-bestowed but nonetheless widely accepted, was one of eight staffers let go last week at the Village Voice. In a note posted on Gawker.com, Christgau announced, "Since I have no intention of giving up rock criticism, all reasonable offers [will be] entertained." (HT: Romenesko.)

The 64-year-old Christgau has published two books' worth of essays and, since 1969, a monthly Consumer Guide column, which in its classic form during the 1970s and '80s offered dense-but-readable one-paragraph reviews and A-plus-through-E-minus letter grades for roughly twenty albums per installment.

Christgau's politics, left but not hard-left, often cropped up in his writing. He summarized his leanings a few years ago to RockCritics.com: "I want to see a radical redistribution of wealth and an end to racism, sexism, and homophobia. But that won't make me pretend there's anything inherently communist or socialist about rock and roll -- at its inception, it was an expression of democracy at its American best and capitalism at its entrepreneurial best...Revolutionaries tend to be puritans. Rock and rollers tend not to be. I prefer rock and rollers. And I've always argued that one reason revolutionaries start so few revolutions is that puritans are a pain in the ass."

The arrest of the number 2 man in al-Qaeda in Iraq was certainly big news, but apparently not big enough to merit a front-page story in the Los Angeles Times. The story is surreptitiously tucked near the inside fold on page A6 of today's paper (Monday, September 4, 2006).

Meanwhile, the Washington Post, who apparently recognized the importance of the capture, placed the story prominently on the top of its front page (image).

Whenever comedians make jokes about America or its people, folks are quick to defend their statements as being innocent and intentionally sarcastic just to evoke laughter. The implication is that such entertainers really don’t hate America, or Republicans for that matter, but are just kidding. Well, on August 28, Bill Maher was Larry King’s guest (replayed on September 2), and his statements about the United States and her people should quell the view that opinions he is expressing on HBO’s “Real Time” such as those identified here are done so just to get a laugh (audio link to follow with full transcript).

For example, Maher showed little regard for America by stating (emphasis mine): “You know, this country is, I've said this before, I'm going to keep saying it, it's a pitiful, helpless giant.” Think he was kidding? Later, Maher elaborated:

Is MSNBC about to leave its offices in Secaucus, New Jersey, and be absorbed into other facilities owned by parent company NBC? According to The Hudson Reporter (hat tip to TVNewser), this appears to be the case: “The geographical division of the new leadership has helped fuel the rumors that NBC will close the Secaucus site and consolidate broadcast operations in Manhattan.”

TVNewser’s Brian Stelter, who has been following developments at MSNBC quite closely, believes such a relocation would be all about dollars and cents:

One of the marvelous hypocrisies regularly exhibited by the liberal media is their constant carping about the caustic tone in politics today while they think of new words to express their vitriol and animus for all things Republican. In a blog piece at HuffnPuff Sunday, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jane Smiley demonstrated this glaring contradiction perfectly as she beseeched fellow liberals that “We can do better” with the hateful words that are used to describe President Bush and Vice President Cheney.

Honestly. I’m not kidding.

Actually titled “We Can Do Better” – and cynically presented “[a]s a Labor Day celebration” – Smiley’s clarion call referenced a speech by former California Governor Hiram Johnson in which the harshest language was used to describe Harrison Gray Otis, then publisher of the Los Angeles Times. Johnson referred to Otis as being “disgraceful, depraved, corrupt, crooked, and putrescent.”

As shocking as it might seem, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Smiley wants liberals to use such language to describe America's current president (emphasis mine):

Talk about your Dubious Distinction Awards. In his recently-released videotape, Adam Gadahn, né Pearlman, a nice boy from California turned Al-Qaeda spokesman, names Sy Hersh as a “sympathetic” personality, along with British MP George Galloway and Brit journalist Robert Fisk. As per the Counterrorism Blog, Gadahn "asks . . . Hersh to 'reveal more' than what was published in a New Yorker article on the war."

The New Yorker article in question was one of a series Hersh has written critical of the Bush adminstration's Iraq policy. In a speech last year Hersh claimed that the US government is being taken over by a neo-con "cult":

The Brahmins might no longer rule the Bay State, but their tradition lives on in the editorial room of the Boston Globe. And what better occasion than Labor Day for the elitist Globe to condescend to workers in a manner that might have brought a smile to the lips of a Lowell or Cabot?

The topic of Labor Day, 2006 is one in great fashion in MSM circles: the horrors of Wal-Mart - and the joys of unionism. According to the Globe, "unionized workers earn on average $1.52 an hour more than those in similar occupations without union representation."

Alack - in the Globe's mind - Wal-Mart workers are too dumb to realize this. With a paternalistic pat on the head, the Globe observes: "[Wal-Mart] employees don't like to think they are patsies." Translation: they are patsies; they're just not smart enough to realize it.

Actual caption:

A group of incensed Ukrainian protestors gathered outside the New York Times headquarters in Midtown Manhattan on Friday, November 18, to demand the newspaper return the Pulitzer Prize won by former New York Times reporter Walter Duranty.

Duranty is infamous for his role in helping to cover-up the 1932-33 Ukrainian genocide, in which Soviet despot Joseph Stalin intentionally starved close to 10 million Ukrainians to death. Now, post "Orange Revolution" president Viktor Yushenko's government is building a center to commemorate the genocide, and the people of the Ukraine have requested that the Pulitzer medal be on display there as a symbol of the lies that helped to perpetuate it.