After the initial shock of the news about Barack Obama's racist preacher Jeremiah Wright wore off, liberals in and out of the media have begun to make excuses for his statements, saying that they were taken out of context.

Well, here's some context. Does this make Wright (and Obama by association) look worse?

It was just a matter of time I suppose. What with Sen. Barack Obama's popularity with college students and the economy being the number one issue for voters, the media finally have an excuse to put a more youthful spin on the classic food vs. prescription drugs meme. A changing media environment, after all, calls for new angles at the same old bias. Someone had to give it the old college try.

Somewhere out there some college co-ed is making an agonizing decision: textbooks or birth control.

Fortunately for America's college-aged voters, ABCNews.com is picking up the banner on this issue:

Erin McKenna, a junior at the University of Pittsburgh, admits that she sometimes has to choose between purchasing textbooks for school and paying for her birth-control prescription.

"I have two jobs and I still can't afford it," McKenna said.

The list of Barack Obama associates that hold views that clash with mainstream America is getting longer every day and now we can add another notch in the "anti-American" column of Obama campaign workers and supporters. This time we find that the Obama campaign's official blogger, Sam Graham-Felsen, has spent time in France participating in labor riots, has written for a socialist magazine, hung a communist flag in his home, and was a fan of Marx while at Harvard.

Is this a case of the media not vetting another Obama associate? Why have we not heard of this man before and why is the media silent on him? After the stories of John Edwards' anti-Catholic bloggers, you'd think that the media would have been on the lookout for campaign blogger related stories. Yet, this guy and his questionable past has been ignored by the same media that tried to give Edwards' bloggers a pass.

Tim Russert: But First...David Axelrod of Team Obama and Geoff Garin of Team Clinton are here to discuss the campaign for Pennsylvania. First question to you Geoff Garin, is there a difference between donating to the Hillary Clinton campaign and say, taking your money and lighting it on fire?

Garin: (staring at lap): I, um, I...its like lemmings...no, no, no it’s like umm she would make the best strongest president...Please don’t hurt me for saying that.

Axelrod: Geoff

Garin: David

Axelrod: Geoff

Garin: Geoff...no wait

Axelrod: Look me in the eyes man. Look over at that large man asking you questions; can you see that look on his face? Do you know why it looks like that? Its because you are the most awkward human being who's ever been on this show since 1947. ... Can I ask you a question? Did you not run negative ads against my moustache last week in Philadelphia?

Garin: No I don’t think so.

Axelrod: Well you did

Garin: Um, um ...I dropped something in my lap. Excuse me

Axelrod: Do you see this moustache? It will jump off my face, register to run for office, campaign against Hillary-- and it would win. It would win damnit.

Garin: Wait what? Who said that?

Axelrod: 55 to 45, but it would win.

Garin: That’s preposterous.

At one point in her career, Oprah Winfrey was pretty much seen as a harmless crank as to the casual viewer catching the show in passing assumed that the program dealt primarily with her seesawiing weight and whether or not her shackup might secretly prefer to be paid in three dollar bills. However, as she has amassed considerable power and influence during her 20 plus years in the public limelight, this broadcaster is no longer an innocent afternoon distraction filling the time between when one arrives home from work and when dinner is set on the table but rather has intentionally set out to subvert American culture and the spiritual well being of the nation.

Not content with the worlds of television, publishing and politics now that she has taken an interest in Barack Obama only because he happens to be Black, Winfrey has now set out to establish her web presence as well. According to the March 3, 2008 edition of USA Today in an article titled “World Is Oprah’s Classroom”, Winfrey plans to lead an online interactive book discussion.

However, there is more to the book being studied than the typical feminist drivel one would expect women of the upper income bracket to be sitting around and reading. The title of the book alone is enough to send a chill down the spine.

Looking for a "carbon karma" guru? Didn't think so. But in case you were, you can always ask CBS's Hari Sreenivasan, who has anointed himself equal to the task. From an April 23 post to CBSNews.com's Couric & Co. blog:

The simple idea with carbon offsets is that you are trying to clean up the earth a bit for the damage you feel you might be doing – whether it be from the carbon emissions of driving your car, flying in a plane, leaving your plasma TV running all night or the mother of all barbeque pits smoking all day. Travel Web sites such as Orbitz, Travelocity, and Expedia – as well as several major airlines – offer the chance to pay an additional fee right when you book a ticket with them. Companies like DrivingGreen offer opportunities to cleanse your travels on the road.

But I have yet to find a BBQ carbon offset calculator. I'm sure one will pop up if there isn't one.

On Election Night 1990, after the news broke that Sen. Jesse Helms had beaten black Democrat Harvey Gantt, NBC’s Andrea Mitchell mourned "This has really been a heart-breaking race," and compared Helms to racist David Duke. On Thursday, Mitchell was seeing old Helms commercials as she denounced the North Carolina Republican Party ads featuring Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s "God damn America" comments. "This has such deep roots in the North Carolina Republican Party, the Jesse Helms Republican Party," she complained on MSNBC’s Morning Joe.

During her 1 pm newscast on Wednesday, Mitchell interviewed McCain adviser Jack Kemp, and asked him what the ad says "about the Republican Party." Kemp agreed with McCain’s call to pull the ad, but displeased Mitchell by adding "The American people know exactly what Reverend Wright stands for. That's Barack Obama's problem and it's going to stick for him for a long time to come."

At the end of Thursday’s CBS "Early Show" co-host Harry Smith interviewed former CBS News anchor Roger Mudd about his new memoir, "The Place to Be: Washington, CBS and The Glory Days of Television News," and teased the upcoming interview by declaring: "And we're also joined this morning by one of the great legends of CBS News, Roger Mudd, who's covered every major story in Washington for decades and worked along some of the best reporters who ever lived." One of those "best reporters," Mudd later explained, was Dan Rather: "There was a front row, Harry. And in the front row was Dan Rather, Marvin Kalb, George Herman, Dan Schorr, Roger Mudd."

Mudd went on to describe Rather and his numerous other colleagues in these terms: "No, it was a -- it was just a great conjunction of very talented, very hard working, very honest, ethical men and women, linked up to 20 years of some of the greatest and most profound stories that could have happened." Of course after Rather’s controversial National Guard story about President Bush in 2004, based on forged documents, the terms "honest" and "ethical" do not exactly come to mind.

Near the end of the segment, Smith asked about Mudd’s famous interview with then Democratic presidential candidate Ted Kennedy in 1979 in which Mudd asked Kennedy why he was running for president. Mudd recalled to Smith: "And his answer was -- it wasn't incoherent, but it wasn't really coherent either. And I think the answer is, Harry, that he really hadn't thought very seriously about why he wanted to be. And that exposed a weakness. That interview was not helpful." Smith later commented that: "Wow and it ended his candidacy." However, that interview was in November 1979, just as Kennedy announced his candidacy and he did not drop out of the race until the Democratic convention in 1980.

Reuters, the British newswire notorious for refusing to call terrorist organizations anything more incendiary than "militant," is now worrying that a Bush administration decision to declassify intelligence that makes Syria look bad may harm "diplomacy."

In their April 24 article, "U.S. lays out Syria intelligence, may harm diplomacy," reporters Arshad Mohammed and Paul Eckert seek to lay blame at the feet of the Bush administration should "diplomacy" fail and/or Syria grow belligerent towards Israel:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States laid out intelligence on Thursday it believes shows North Korea helped Syria build a suspected nuclear reactor destroyed by Israel last year, a step that may complicate its diplomacy both on the Korean Peninsula and in the Middle East.

In breaking its official silence on the mysterious September 6 Israeli air strike, the Bush administration is taking the risk that Syria could be angered by the public disclosures and could seek to retaliate against Israel.

In an international version of the Obama-ABC dustup, two lawsuits have been launched against CNN over remarks made by crusty commentator Jack Cafferty criticizing the Chinese government as well as products made in China.

The first suit was filed in Beijing by 14 lawyers who allege that Cafferty "violated the dignity and reputation of the Chinese people," as Reuters puts it. The second was filed this week by a beautician and a schoolteacher for similar reasons.

Cafferty's remarks actually pale in comparison to things he's said in the past about Republicans and yet, demonstrating once again that it is the right that is the biggest defender of free speech, faced no negative repercussions. Here's Cafferty's original quote about China:

Just heard that and oil field larger than all of the opec stuff may exist off Brazil?Is it any coincidence that oil futures show the first weakness in weeks! We have been praying about this and this may make all the ethanol and hybrids look pretty silly, though I think if folks can afford them they should buy them if they want.

But lets get our farmers back to wheat and other staples for the sake of the economy and the bellies of the rest of the world. 1000s die daily in Africa from malnutrition. Not necessary. 

Rush mentioned NBs twice today, quoting from articles here. I have approached the Maine delegation re artificially high oil prices, especially given the Northeast uses so much of it for home heating. It is $4/gal now and this is simply unacceptable given how much there is left in ground that we cannot get at because of "progressive" policies of the left.

One of my lefty buddies in town spouted right out"you should be driving an electric car!" Why, when my '97 Sentra gets 40mpg, more than most of the hybrids that pass me on the interstate. Try explaining the science and economics to someone like that! Smaller cars so you meed more  of them, you still have to produce energy, I mean it looks like they care, but they have not thought it through.

Will NBC’s prime time entertainment shows function as the equivalent of DNC-TV this election year, snidely bashing Republicans in the guise of wry cultural commentary? Just last month, an episode of NBC’s “Medium” featured an ex-POW state senator from Arizona as a murdering cannibal. And on last Thursday’s episode of “30 Rock,” the sitcom featured a stridently anti-Republican plot in which a fictitious conservative corporate executive (played by Alec Baldwin) launches a celebrity ad campaign to prevent African-Americans from voting because, as a black character argues, “No matter what, [black Americans] are gonna always vote Democrat.”

The 30-minute program was filled with potshots against the GOP and conservatives, including the idea that the tortured ex-POW John McCain is being backed by something called “The Committee to Re-Invade Vietnam.” The corporate executive portrayed by Baldwin, “Jack Donaghy,” is a ridiculous parody of a conservative businessman, blurting out comments such as “My cologne is distilled from the bilge water of Rupert Murdoch’s yacht,” and “Not thinking is what makes America great.”

Voting for someone based on qualifications or ideology rather than race is very "white" according to "View" co-host Whoopi Goldberg. Also, according to Joy Behar, only white males like tax cuts.

Discussing Elisabeth Hasselbeck’s concern that women are voting for Hillary Clinton because she’s a woman and black voting for Barack Obama because he’s black, Whoopi Goldberg dismissed Hasselbeck’s concerns and proclaimed "that’s a very white way to look at it." Of course Whoopi said it "with a huge amount of love." Hasselbeck sarcastically responded "let me take off my white goggles." Sherri Shepherd and Whoopi Goldberg agreed Hasselbeck can not suggesting the white people will never understand.

Earlier in the discussion, Behar added that voting for someone with the same gender or race may be in a person’s interest. She hypothesized that a woman over 50 who may face age discrimination may vote for Hillary as a way to combat that. She also suggested that white men vote Republican because "the white male loves his tax cuts." In Behar’s world, only white men like tax cuts.

The entire transcript is below.

Looks like the daughter of the West Virginia's Democratic governor has gotten herself into a bit of a scandal with an unearned, politically awarded college degree from West Virginia University. A panel to review allegations that the woman didn't really earn that degree was convened and it was determined that she just does not qualify to get that degree that was awarded her by "High-ranking academic officers" at the school. Naturally, no report mentions that Gov. Joe Manchin is a member of the Democratic Party and that HE was the one that appointed the school's officials.

It seems that at the school, highly placed friends of the Democratic governor were trying to cover for the Guv's daughter who claimed for several years that she had a degree when she did not. Heather Bresch was suddenly awarded an MBA from WVU nearly a decade after she left the school and after the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette called the University to check on the woman's degree.

New York Times reporter Michael Luo wrung his hands Thursday about a potentially racially divisive ad from the North Carolina Republican party that linked two Democrats running for governor to Sen. Barack Obama and his hate-mongering former pastor Jeremiah Wright.

Despite objections from Senator John McCain, the North Carolina Republican Party is planning to roll out a television advertisement on Monday attacking two Democrats who are running for governor by linking them to Senator Barack Obama and playing a clip of his former pastor excoriating the United States.

The release of the commercial, which Republican officials in North Carolina said would make its debut during the 6 p.m. newscasts, injects a potentially divisive racial element into the campaign for the state's Democratic presidential primary, which is on May 6.

That's the second time in two days the paper has described the ad as racially divisive. On Wednesday, Patrick Healy wrote:

..... and waits until the 30th paragraph of its online story to reveal it.

The feds seem to be closing in on Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich -- and at least one Chicago television station seems determined to minimize exposure not only of his party affiliation, but of others who have received tainted campaign contributions.

Here are important excerpts from the report of Chicago's CBS Channel 2, WBBM (HT Hot Air and Hot Air commenters):

Rezko Pal, Ex-Aide To Gov. Pleads Guilty

CHICAGO (CBS) ― In an explosive development reaching to the state's highest office, a former high-ranking state official claimed Tuesday that Gov. Rod Blagojevich was on hand when he presented $25,000 in campaign money to now-indicted fundraiser Antoin "Tony" Rezko.

Ali Ata, 56, a former executive director of the Illinois Finance Authority, said Blagojevich then asked Rezko if he had talked to Ata about a job on the state payroll.

Ata said later, after he made a second $25,000 campaign contribution, Blagojevich again brought up the subject of a job and said it should be one in which Ata "could make some money."

On Thursday's "Good Morning America," correspondent Claire Shipman discussed race and Tuesday's Pennsylvania primary and managed to skip two key reasons as to why white voters may have chosen Senator Clinton over Barack Obama. Shipman never mentioned Jeremiah Wright, Obama's incendiary reverend and a man who made controversial comments about white people, among other groups.

She also glossed over and minimized Obama's comments about small town Americans being "bitter" and clinging to guns, God and xenophobic sentiment. Now, considering that many of these rural voters were white, this would seem to be an important component to a discussion of the issue. During the segment, however, racism was the only explanation Shipman explored. She intoned, "And some new data does suggest what nobody really wants to think, that race may be an issue." The correspondent later added, "Are some Democratic voters pulling the lever for Hillary Clinton because they don't want to vote for a black man?"

A Bible quote House Speaker Nancy Pelosi often uses to justify her environmental agenda doesn't exist, biblical scholars tell CNSNews.com reporter Pete Winn. Pelosi last cited the fictional Bible passage two days ago to commemorate Earth Day. In her April 22 news release, Pelosi said, "The Bible tells us in the Old Testament, 'To minister to the needs of God's creation is an act of worship. To ignore those needs is to dishonor the God who made us.'"

A professor at Yale Divinity School tells Winn it’s not even a close paraphrase of anything in the Bible, and a professor of Old Testament at Northern Baptist Theological Seminary says Pelosi’s Bible quote is completely "fictional." A Roman Catholic doctor of scripture adds that it can’t be found "even in pieces or bits." In addition to her recent news release, Pelosi’s "verbatim" citing of the quote goes back to at least 2005, Winn’s research shows the mistake repeating:

– A 2005 Christmas message to the U.S. House.

– A 2007 speech to U.S. House Science and Technology Committee.

– A 2007 Earth Day message.