Ken Shepherd's blog

Imagine if you will that an ex-con/former crack cocaine user, Republican ex-mayor of a major American city recently: denounced Asian-American store owners in his city for running "dirty" shops, insulted Filipina immigrant nurses, saying they were taking away jobs from Americans, and, most recently, wound up using a racial slur against another ethnic group during an event intended to mend fences with Asian-Americans. Oh, and also imagine that same Republican is a delegate for Mitt Romney at the upcoming GOP convention.

The national media would be all over the story. But it's not a Republican who's done all these things, it's Councilman Marion Barry (D) of Washington, D.C.

The broadcast media's blackout on news of the Catholic Church's lawsuit against the Obama administration continues apace, while the news media covers much more important events like who won American Idol.

So it's no wonder that MRCTV's Dan Joseph found only one person yesterday who knew about the lawsuit. Watch the video in the embed below the page break.

Reuters columnist Chrystia Freeland must have editors who don't question her judgment very much. How else do you account for this gem making it into her final draft today?:

Like anorexics, who think they are grossly fat when they are very thin, the American body politic is suffering from a national version of body dysmorphia, with nearly half the country believing taxes are high, when they are comparatively and historically low.

Funny she uses that analogy when the Left is hard at work convincing Americans that they are all morbidly obese and in need of national nannying about their overeating and under-exercising. At any rate, Freeland justifies her claim by noting that:

"A House committee chairman charged Wednesday that the CIA and Defense Department jeopardized national security by cooperating too closely with filmmakers producing a movie on the raid that killed Osama bin Laden," reported Larry Margasak of the Associated Press yesterday. "[Rep. Peter] King [R-N.Y.] referred to documents obtained by Judicial Watch in a Freedom of Information Act request. He said the filmmakers received 'extremely close, unprecedented and potentially dangerous collaboration' from the Obama administration."

Margasak's story on Rep. Peter King's hearing investigating the matter was printed in today's Washington Post, but editors buried the item on page C4, deep in the heart of the Style section, which typically reports on fashion, music, and the entertainment industry. Noted Margasak:

Once again last night, President Obama faced an embarrassing showing in Democratic Party primaries, winning only 58.3 percent of the votes of Arkansas Democrats and 57.9 percent of Kentucky ones. Once again, in covering the story, the Washington Post buried the news placing the development on page A6. The last time the president faced such an embarrassingly low showing, the Post put its coverage of federal inmate Keith Judd's stunning 40 percent showing in West Virginia's Democratic primary on page A4.

This time around, Post editors gave readers a misleading subheadline that invoked an all-too-predictable liberal bogeyman: "His struggles in Appalachia, parts of South could be attributed to racism, some say." Yet in the article itself, two Southern Democrats told the Post that while a small minority of white Democrats may be motivated by antipathy to Obama's racial heritage, the vast bulk of the anti-Obama vote is predicated on their distaste for his liberal policies.

"You know what, you've been a great journalist for 44 years," The View host Barbara Walters gushed to Dan Rather at the close of a softball interview on May 23 about his new memoir, "Rather Outspoken."

"No matter what CBS says!" an excited co-host Joy Behar interjected. Yes, "no matter what CBS says," Walters agreed of the former anchor/managing editor of the CBS Evening News, who was fired from the Tiffany network for running stories on a discredited phony memo that alleged President George W. Bush was often AWOL when he should have showed up for training exercises when serving in the Air National Guard.

In her May 22 "Singles File" -- described as "A weekly playlist for the listener with a one-track mind" -- Washington Post music critic Allison Stewart suggested readers might want to download the new single "Reagan" by rap artist Killer Mike.

"The Obama years haven't been fruitful ones for sociopolitically minded rappers, at least until now," Stewart gushed, noting that the Atlanta musician "dusts off some late '80s ghosts on this unblinking and brutal track from his newest [album] 'R.A.P. Music.'" But when you check out the lyrics of the track, and read his May 21 interview with HipHopDX.com, what really becomes clear is Killer Mike's "unblinking" apology for the late terror-sponsoring Libyan dictator Muammar Qadhafi.

Not too long ago, the Left was going apoplectic about a Sarah Palin-affiliated website showing a map of targeted congressional seats denoted by crosshair symbols. MSNBC in particular was strong in condemning violent rhetoric in politics, suggesting that conservative rhetoric in particular could incite crazies to violence.

Fast forward to this week. On Sunday, YouTube user edbex posted video that shows South Carolina AFL-CIO president Donna DeWitt taking some whacks at a pinata with a black & white photo of Gov. Nikki Haley (R-S.C.) affixed to it (h/t Daily Caller's Matt K. Lewis). [Update: Our friends at our sister site MRCTV have the video as well; You can watch it embedded below the page break]

We've written before critically about Twitter, including posts about how the micro-blogging site's was slow in removing a "Kill Zimmerman" account that encouraged violence -- in violation of Twitter's terms of service agreement by the way -- against alleged 2nd-degree murderer George Zimmerman. But today, we have to offer a hearty kudos to the folks at Twitter for refusing to cooperate with a censorship effort in Pakistan to silence "Everybody Draw Muhammad" tweets.

By contrast, the Associated Press is reporting that Facebook -- which on Friday became a publicly-traded company -- gladly cooperated with efforts by the Pakistani government to prevent users in Pakistan from accessing pages devoted to Draw Muhammad Day content:

On today's edition of The Daily Rundown, MSNBC's Chuck Todd sat down to chat with Rev. Jesse Jackson to discuss a variety of issues, from Afghanistan to whether the Rev. Jeremiah Wright is fair game for Republicans to attack President Obama. In the middle of the interview, Todd asked the former Democratic presidential candidate about the NAACP Board of Directors's "historic" decision over the weekend to give the organization's stamp of approval to same-sex marriage.

"There has been this conventional wisdom that particularly among older African-Americans that the president's position on gay marriage is going to hurt him," Todd noted, adding, "Does the NAACP sort of backing up the president on this help convince the older African-American [voters], might be a little more religious, might be struggling with this issue, to ignore that part?"

We all know that the radical left has no sense of humor, but does the Washington Post have to encourage them by devoting stories that legitimize their absurd petitions? The Saturday Post's Style front-page devoted 22 paragraphs to two Occupy D.C. protesters who ginned up a petition effort against, of all things, Fojol Brothers, a popular D.C. street food truck whose employees don turbans and wear fake mustaches as they serve up ethnic cuisine.

At time of the article's publication, the petition -- which objected to an "Orientalist and racist appropriation of South Asian and East African cultures" -- had a paltry 950-some signatures on Change.org, a left-wing petition site. What's more, Post staffer Tim Carman waited until paragraph 14 to disclose that petition author Arturo J. Viscarra's comrade-in-arms/roommate Drew Franklin "is the son of the Post’s Travel editor Zofia Smardz." 

"It does appear this year that the ghosts of presidents past have been haunting the current race for the future leader of the country," MSNBC's Chris Jansing noted as she opened up a segment featuring Center for American Progress's Daniella Gibbs Leger and Republican Strategist Joe Watkins about how both President Obama and former Gov. Mitt Romney, but chiefly Romney, have invoked other presidents in their campaign rhetoric.

Jansing seemed perplexed at Romney campaigning by invoking the liberal Clinton -- saying Obama discarded the Clintonian pronouncement that the "era of big government is over" -- but she wasn't equally incredulous at Obama citing the late conservative President Ronald Reagan to boost his call for tax hikes for the rich. What's more, not once did Jansing highlight recent revelations that Obama has altered WhiteHouse.gov presidents biographies to gratuitously insert himself into them, even though that news item was covered earlier this week by the Bible-for-liberal journalists, the New York Times:

Perhaps liberals are wising up and realizing that comparing voter ID laws to Jim Crow statutes is, well, a bit much. It seems now the preferred term of choice, at least on MSNBC, is simply "voter suppression laws."

During the 11 a.m. Eastern hour of MSNBC programming, host Thomas Roberts matter-of-factly labeled voter ID laws as "voter suppression laws" that "could keep minorities and young people away from the polls" as he introduced his guests Heather Smith of Rock the Vote and the NAACP's Marvin Randolph.

"Some religious leaders are struggling with President Obama’s support for gay marriage but not the Rev. Jesse Jackson," gushed frequent MSNBC contributor Toure noted in the opening line of his May 17 Time.com "Ideas" blog post as he introduced how he "spoke to the Reverend [Jesse Jackson] about the impact of Obama’s announcement among blacks and the wider community of the faithful."

It goes without saying that the interview was a game of softball in which Toure helpfully lobbed easy questions over the plate to drive home for readers, but particularly those who may be African-American Christians who typically vote Democratic, that it would be great if they could evolve to where President Obama has on same-sex marriage, a "civil rights" and "discrimination" issue.

Our friend John Nolte at Big Journalism points out that Politico is back to its old tricks, defending Barack Obama from criticism by digging up dirt on a private citizen who supports his Republican opponent. In 2008, it was Joe the Plumber who was vetted by the Politico. This time around, it's an Iowa man who appears in a Romney Web ad.

"Right now Politico is doing oppo-research on private citizens to aid Obama. Seems to me that makes journalist's private lives fair game, no?" Nolte asked this morning in a tweet, noting in another tweet that "Politico's Maggie Haberman is a public figure in a position of power. Why is her private life any less newsworthy than a private citizen?"

"I’ve never understood the opposition to gay marriage." That's the confession with which Sally Quinn -- the agnostic, liberal editor of the Washington Post's "On Faith" religion section-- began her May 11 column. But rather than humbly seek an understanding of the religious faith that informs the beliefs of millions of American Christians, Quinn launched into an attack on them by comparing them to opponents of the racial integration of the nation's public schools.

History, Quinn insists, is on the side of the eventual societal and legal acceptance of same-sex marriage, and those who stand in the way will one day be haunted by it, living their lives knowing how wretched they were to oppose progress in the first place:

MSNBC's Chris Matthews is featured in a new "Lean Forward" promo spot [embedded below page break; MP3 audio here] quoting his "hero" Winston Churchill as having asked "Then what are we fighting for?" when his finance minister suggested that the government's budget for the arts would have to cut to aid Britain's war effort.  Matthews used that story as a warning to conservatives that the nation's dire financial straits are no excuse for cutting federal spending on the arts.

But alas, it seems the story is poppycock, as Churchill historian Richard Langworth noted in a March 2009 blog post.

MSNBC's Martin Bashir -- who attends a New York City church pastored by a conservative minister who signed the pro-traditional marriage Manhattan Declaration -- yesterday maligned the Holy Bible in an attempt to defend President Obama from the charge that his support of same-sex marriage contradicts biblical teaching on matrimony.

The incident came in an interview with Dr. Robert Jeffress after the Dallas-area Baptist minister affirmed that he "absolutely" agreed that defending same-sex marriage "contradicts" the teaching of Scripture. "I think the president is violating the very teaching and words of the Jesus he says he follows," Jeffress noted. That's when Bashir sprung his "have you stopped beating your wife, yet"-style gotcha question:

Yesterday morning, the Washington Post published a drawing by Tom Toles in which the liberal cartoonist depicts a minister marrying two men, with the speech bubble reading, "If anyone here objects to the marriage of these two men, speak up now because opponents are aging and dying off and soon won't matter anymore..."

In his trademark depiction of himself in the corner reacting to the graphic, Toles depicts himself asking "Is it okay to yell 'Hurry Up'?" So to borrow from the former Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson (Fla.),  does Tom Toles want same-sex marriage opponents to "die quickly"? [Cartoon depicted below page break]

If you had any doubts that the liberal media are doing their level best this year to shield the public from embarrassing news developments pertaining to President Obama, you need look no further than the strange tale of federal prison inmate #11593-051, Keith Judd, who gave President Obama a run for his money in yesterday's West Virginia Democratic presidential primary.

The quadrennial presidential vanity candidate who is serving out a 17-year sentence for extortion garnered more than 40 percent of the state's primary votes, well above the 15 percent threshold to secure at least one delegate at the national convention in Charlotte this summer. Keep in mind that West Virginia's primary is closed, meaning this is not a matter of Republican voters casting mischief votes to embarrass the president.  So how did the broadcast network mornings shows -- NBC's Today, ABC's Good Morning America, and CBS This Morning -- deal with what at the very least is a head-turning watercooler story? They didn't. All three networks ignored the story.

Martin Bashir -- he who slammed Ann Romney as "two-faced," gratuitously ripped fellow Christian Rick Santorum by comparing him to Stalin, and cravenly suggested Santorum's less of a genuine Christian than Barack Obama  judged by the amount of money the men gave to charity respectively -- mounted his moral high horse yet again to thunder hellfire and brimstone upon a conservative Republican.

The target of MSNBC's demon deacon today was Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), whom Bashir was calling to account for his plans to vote for a bill that would spare the Pentagon of budget cuts by trimming social welfare spending elsewhere in the federal budget.

Yesterday I noted how two Washington Post reporters, Andrew Higgins and Keith Richburg, studiously refused to tag Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng as a "human rights activist." Curious about whether the Post has ever described him as such in its reporting, I did a Nexis search.

What I found was that at no time in the past few weeks has Chen -- whose work included shedding a spotlight on forced abortions in China -- ever been described by a Post reporter as a "human rights activist" or "human rights advocate." Curiously, however, the Post editorial board has directly and indirectly labeled Chen as one:

In the domain of what properly constitutes human rights issues, forced abortions and sterilizations have to fall in that category. So why isn't the Washington Post describing Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng as a "human rights activist"?

In two stories packaged side-by-side on page A9 of the May 8 paper, the Post's Andrew Higgins and Keith B. Richburg failed to use the term to describe Chen. Higgins tagged Chen a "blind activist," as in an activist who is blind, not an activist for the blind, but the term could confuse casual readers unfamiliar with Chen's plight. Richburg opened his story by tagging Chen as "the self-taught lawyer who has become the center of a diplomatic crisis between the United States and China."

Fifty-six percent of Virginians approve of Republican Bob McDonnell's job as governor and 49 percent believe the Old Dominion is on the right track. That contrasts with a 47 percent average approval rating for President Obama and an average of 32.7 percent of Americans who believe the country is on the "right track."

Yet the Washington Post chose to spin the polling numbers as a negative, noticing a downward trend from previous numbers and attributing the shift to "a contentious legislative session that drew large protests and national ridicule to the state Capitol."

Rick Reilly's wide world of sports, apparently, has little use for conservative evangelical Christians and their convictions. Last year he mocked a teenage Christian wrestler who defaulted rather than wrestle a girl. Now the ESPN columnist has set his sights on Nebraska assistant football coach Ron Brown, who has been politically active in local government debates about expanding anti-discrimination laws to include sexual orientation. [Related item: ESPN Columnist Agitates for Coach's Firing for Proclaiming His Religious Beliefs]

"Like to meet one of the doomed sinners who has Ron Brown so inflamed?" Reilly asked rhetorically before introducing readers to one Brett Major who "thanks to Ron Brown himself" became a Christian:

"Russia's top military officer told a conference in Moscow attended by senior U.S. and NATO officials that Russia would mount a preemptive strike on U.S.-led NATO missile defense facilities in Eastern Europe if Washington goes ahead with its plan to build a missile shield," the Associated Press has reported.

The Washington Post carried the 5-paragraph story, but buried it on page A6 of the May 4 paper under the headline, "Military ups the ante on missile defense."

"Eleven Democratic state party chairs will announce their support today for a proposed 'freedom to marry' plank in the 2012 Democratic platform," Politico's Alexander Burns reported this morning. Among other high-powered backers of the platform petition is none other than former House Speaker and current Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

Yet nowhere in Burns 9-paragraph story did Burns seek comment from the Obama White House about whether the president -- whose 2008 campaign position was that he is "not in favor" of it because marriage is "between a man and a woman" -- takes a stance on the issue of adopting the platform plank. What's more, Burns failed to note that a recent survey shows only 49 percent of African-American voters -- who are among the most loyal of Democratic voters and staunchest Obama backers -- support same-sex marriage. The same survey shows that 42 percent of Catholic voters, a key swing voting bloc, oppose same sex marriage. Thirty-eight percent of political independents also oppose gay marriage.