David Rogers glossed over the late Rep. Jack Murtha's (D-Pa.) Haditha Marines smear in an obituary published yesterday and updated this morning at Politico:

Rather than lie low, Murtha further made himself a target with public comments in the spring of 2006 pressuring the Marine command to investigate allegations of civilian casualties at Haditha, Iraq. This infuriated many Marines, and critics argued that the congressman had become more partisan himself out of loyalty to Pelosi.

But Murtha went beyond pressing for a formal military investigation, which is a legitimate call any congressman could and should make after an incident like Haditha. The former Marine practically declared the Marines at Haditha guilty by saying they have killed "in cold blood." 

Updated: Washington Post adds mention about Murtha's Haditha comments, thanks me for me pointing out omission (see bottom of post).

Rep. Jack Murtha (D-Pa.) passed away earlier today, and the Washington Post has already published a 26-paragraph obituary.

Post staffers Martin Weil and Carol Leonnig don't gloss over some of Murtha's political controversies, such as his penchant as a pork barrel appropriator and his role in the Abscam scandal.

Yet oddly enough, Murtha's most profoundly jarring political scandal -- his insulting and untrue smear of U.S. Marines at Haditha as cold-blooded killers -- went unmentioned.

Meanwhile, the Associated Press, for its part, noted the controversy...:

"The culture's come a long way, baby, what with two female solo anchors now presiding over America's three major network-news shows," purred Phoebe Eaton of Harper's Bazaar magazine in a feature in which she interviewed CBS "Evening News" anchor Katie Cougar, er, Couric.

But while she celebrated how Katie "peel[ed] Sarah Palin like a raw carrot on issues of foreign policy and the economy," Eaton included a vampy video of Couric at a photo shoot all dolled up for the fashion cameras and talking about such serious affairs as what makes her feel sexy (little black dresses) and the source of her good looks (genetics).

Sample sound bite: "I've been very fortunate. All the girls in my family have pretty good legs, I guess."

Paul Farhi sure didn't when he panned Oscar-nominated movie "The Blind Side" during a special "Hardball on Hollywood" segment with Vanity Fair's Michael Wolff and host Chris Matthews on the February 2 program.

The Washington Post media critic slammed the Best Picture-nominated drama -- based on a true story -- as just another movie in which the white characters' guilt is assauged by helping a black guy (video embedded at right; an MP3 audio clip is available here):

PAUL FARHI, Washington Post: The problem is that the black character is basically a prop to make the white people feel better about themselves, and that's been the major criticism. It's also the "magic negro," in other words, the idea that a black character will emerge to provide wisdom for the white people involved in the movie.

Forget six more weeks of winter. It's possible Hell has frozen over.

In the Groundhog Day edition of the Washington Post, liberal, pro-choice sports columnist Sally Jenkins took direct aim at the National Organization for Women (NOW) for its campaign to keep a pro-life ad featuring Florida Gators quarterback Tim Tebow and his mother from airing during Sunday's Super Bowl.

Jenkins slammed NOW, mocking it as one of the few "Dwindling Organizations of Ladies in Lockstep" (DOLL) that is coming off more "pro-abortion" than pro-choice with its anti-Tebow crusade (emphasis mine):

On his January 29 program, MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan introduced Rall as "an award-winning cartoonist who caught our eye with cartoons like this one showing some Wall Street types chatting about President Obama's bank tax."

But Ratigan must be ignorant of or apathetic regarding Rall's penchant for soldier-smearing left-wing screeds. After all, he all but personally endorsed Rall's fundraising pitch (audio available here):

On Saturday, the Obama administration quietly scrapped the "created or saved" rubric for measuring the president's success in job creation.

Covering the story, the Washington Post today also quietly noted the news, placing the story --entitled "Stimulus created 600,000 jobs at the end of 2009, White House says" -- on page A15.

The Post's Ed O'Keefe wrote the 18-paragraph story (emphasis mine):

What's going on out there in the Republican Party is kind of a frightening, almost Cambodia re-education camp going on in that party, where they're going around to people, sort of switching their minds around saying, if you're not far right, you're not right enough. 

Matthews was on the program to discuss President Obama's live televised exchanges with Republican Congressmen earlier in the day at the House GOP retreat in Baltimore.

His comparison is, of course, patently offensive not just to conservative Republicans but more importantly to the survivors of the Khmer Rouge, many of whom became refugees in the United States and who still bear in their souls hellish nightmares of the regime as well as survivor's guilt for being among the fortunate to have escaped with their lives.

So let's not tell Chris Matthews, shall we. [audio available here]

The "Hardball" host today described the California Democratic senator as a "level-headed" "centrist," indeed the "true north of American politics" in a segment in which he showed Feinstein saying that President Obama reconsider the arrangements for the federal criminal trial for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in lower Manhattan:

A male health care worker from California outed himself to the Cleveland Plain Dealer yesterday as "Ellie Light," the pro-Obama letter writer who duped nearly 70 newspapers into publishing his letters.

The Plain Dealer's Stephen Koff has the story:

A man who identified himself as Winston Steward, 51, of Frazier Park, Calif., says he made up the name "Ellie Light" to protect himself from criticism and possible physical attacks, and used fake addresses across the country to get local newspapers to publish his letters.

"I am Winston Steward and have been sending the letters from Ellie Light," he told The Plain Dealer in an e-mail late Tuesday, following a phone interview in which he said the same. "I hope this ends any confusion and sets the record straight."

"What are people flippin' out about," bewildered moderator Whoopi Goldberg -- herself an ardent pro-choice activist -- asked.

"The only argument against any of it is, that, you know, he could just as easily become some kind of a rapist pedophile. I mean, you don't know what someone's going to be," Behar answered, adding:

Poor Joe Klein wishes he could give a lecture to average Americans -- the "Too Dumb to Thrive" who probably don't read his magazine's Swampland blog anyway -- on the virtues of Obamanomics.

Of course, they'd probably be too stupid to understand the enlightened Mr. Anonymous, especially Fox News viewers.

Indeed, at least in Klein's mind, these alleged ignorant boobs are practically an existential threat to democracy itself (emphasis mine):

A publicly-traded corporation, The Washington Post Company (NYSE: WPO) publishes a daily newspaper which includes daily editorials aimed at influencing public opinion inside the corridors of Congress, White House, and regulatory agencies, and ultimately over voter preferences at the polls.

What's more, the Post Company's newspaper has demonstrated its willingness to devote virtually limitless resources in its efforts to pound out a negative drumbeat in the final days before an election. Just ask former Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) or Gov. Bob McDonnell (R-Va.), two targets of the paper's openly hostile campaigns to derail their candidacies in favor of their endorsed candidates, Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) and State Sen. Creigh Deeds (D-Va.) respectively.

Yet when it comes to conservative groups or non-mainstream media for-profit corporation engaging in the same use of "unlimited independent expenditures" to influence voters, that's an entirely different story for the Post, which slammed yesterday's Supreme Court ruling as "Judicial Activism Inc.":

Updated [14:30 EST, see bottom of post]: Nearly 6-out-of-10 young adults are pro-life a new survey finds.

Every January, hundreds if not thousands of busloads teeming with teenagers and college students, many of them young women, descend on the nation's capital for the annual March for Life.

But if one were to believe Newsweek's Krista Gesaman, the March is an aging senior citizen affair that is hurting for attendance by young women (emphasis mine):

Today is the 37th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court case legalizing abortion, and droves of women are prepared to face rainy weather to support their positions during the annual Washington, D.C., demonstrations. But there will be one major difference with the demonstration route this year—it’s shorter.

“The organizers are getting older, and it’s more difficult for them to walk a long distance,” says Stanley Radzilowski, an officer in the planning unit for the Washington, D.C., police department. A majority of the participants are in their 60s and were the original pioneers either for or against the case, he says.

So this raises the question: where are the young, vibrant women supporting their pro-life or pro-choice positions? Likely, they’re at home.

At this point, Gesaman turned to a feminist professor from the University of Maryland who sees an equal lack of energy among young pro-choice and pro-life women:

To use a euphemism beloved by El Rushbo, Air America has assumed room temperature.

Brian Stelter of New York Times's Media Decoder with the story:

Air America, the progressive talk radio network, said Thursday that it would cease broadcasting immediately, bowing to what it called a “very difficult economic environment.”

“It is with the greatest regret, on behalf of our Board, that we must announce that Air America Media is ceasing its live programming operations as of this afternoon, and that the Company will file soon under Chapter 7 of the Bankruptcy Code to carry out an orderly winding-down of the business,” the chair of Air America Media, Charlie Kireker, said in a memorandum.

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