Last July, when news first surfaced that Democrat John Edwards was reportedly having an affair, an editor at the Los Angeles Times forcefully instructed the staff not to report the story "until further notified." (The Times finally got around to tepidly reporting the scandal weeks later.)

Now take a look at today's Times. A huge color photo plasters the top of the front page. The large headline is, "Another GOP Bombshell."

In light of some awful high-profile murders by sick individuals, the Los Angeles Times' Tim Rutten wants the Department of Homeland Security to revisit its report from earlier this year that connects potential terrorism to "right-wing extremism." And Rutten seems especially concerned about those serving in the military. From his column:

Two months ago, the Republican National Committee and many conservative commentators went into paroxysms of rage over a report by the Department of Homeland Security drawing attention to the potential terrorist threat of resurgent right-wing extremism. The department ended up apologizing for noting the extremist underground's attempts to recruit returning military personnel. (All three of the men involved in the Oklahoma City bombing met and developed their convictions while serving in the Army.) As the body count mounts, the department may want to reconsider that apology.

Rutten appears to imply that extremist "convictions" are developed while serving in the military.

Unemployment is zooming towards ten percent. The national debt is reaching levels never thought imaginable. And Barack Obama acts more like a celebrity than President. So what's bothering progressive nitwit Marc Cooper? Newt Gingrich!

Cooper's piece in the Los Angeles Times, "Newt Gingrich, zombie politician," is a typical bitter and stale attack on the former House Speaker: He resigned as Speaker "under a cloud of dishonor, disgrace and corruption"; he's remarried and divorced; he received a book advance while still in office. Blah, blah, blah. (His angry piece is hardly different than one that his curmudgeon friend Robert Scheer wrote ten years ago.)

Yet what's even worse is that Cooper can't avoid misleading his readers and failing to present his facts honestly. For example, Cooper writes,

"Remember during the campaign when John McCain attacked [Barack] Obama for acting like a celebrity and we all laughed at the grumpy old shellshocked fool? Well, it turns out he was right ...  It's getting to where you can't turn on your TV without seeing Obama."

That's not a Republican talking. It's Obama supporter Bill Maher in an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, "Enough With the Obamathon." Maher - like most clear-thinking individuals - has pretty much seen enough of the never-ending adulation and exposure being heaped on President Obama. (I must admit: I never thought I'd use the words "clear-thinking" and "Maher" in the same sentence. But Maher's op-ed proves the old adage that even a broken clock is right twice a day.)

From Maher's article:

Since when is the media so interested in keeping America abreast of the latest news coming out of Ireland? A commission in Ireland just released a report detailing awful abuse of children who attended Catholic schools "from the 1930's to the 1990's, when the last of the institutions closed." And what's ensued is practically an all-out media frenzy.

The AP, Reuters, the New York Times, the LA Times, Washington Post, the Boston Globe, and many others are all over the story. At Google news, the story returns "about 1,531" results.

Yes, the stories of abuse are quite troubling, but it sure seems that the media is singling out the Catholic Church's misdeeds - again.

Today - not decades ago - there is egregious abuse happening with far-greater occurrence in our nation's schools. Yet where's the coverage?

An explosive, front-page investigation on Sunday (5/10/09) in the Los Angeles Times reported that the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) "repeatedly" returned teachers and aides credibly accused of child molestation back to classrooms, and these individuals then molested children again. The jaw-dropping story, by Times staffer Jason Song, is incredibly angering, and the tales of abuse are stomach-turning. (An accompanying audio slideshow at the Times web site is quite disturbing.)

In the last several years, media outlets have endlessly ripped and tarred the Catholic Church for mishandling episodes from decades ago. Meanwhile, these episodes in LAUSD are all quite recent. One documented case dates back to just last year!

Where's the outrage from the rest of the media?

On Sunday (4/26/09), the Los Angeles Times finally got around to looking into the issue of Planned Parenthood workers caught on hidden camera appearing to violate the law. Workers at numerous clinics around the country appear to be illegally advising girls they believe to be underage to conceal statutory rape.

The Times profiled the hero of these undercover busts, Lila Rose, a 20-year-old student at UCLA ("Antiabortion movement gets a new-media twist"). Rose's pro-life mission that has been conducting these hidden-camera operations is called Live Action.

Yet, rather than directing any real outrage at Planned Parenthood for concealing the despicable crimes of statutory rape and child abuse, the Times seemed more perturbed at the "conservative" personalities behind Rose and her efforts. From the article:

Check out the following two stories:

1. A former Catholic priest comes forward Monday (4/20/09) to claim that another priest abused him as a teenager nearly 30 years ago. (The accused priest has no other similar public complaints and denies the allegations against him.)

2. A former school teacher was sentenced Wednesday (4/22/09) after pleading no contest to eight felony counts, including having sex with two girls under the age of 16. The man "admitted to having intercourse with the girls, performing oral sex with the teens and taking extremely explicit nude photographs of his victims -- including pictures of him with one of the girls - before sending the images over the Internet."

Now it's quiz time! To which story did the Los Angeles Times devote two generous color photos and a 640-word article? Which story did the Times totally ignore?

Here's a rare sight: A host of a major television show forcefully defending the Bible and central tenets of Christianity. It happened recently on Comedy Central's The Colbert Report, when host Stephen Colbert - in his own inimitable way - rebutted the assertions of Bart Ehrman, a self-described "happy agnostic" who has written a number of books attempting to discredit the Bible and the central beliefs of Christianity.

By the time the interview was finished, the "happy agnostic" Ehrman wasn't looking too happy. Viewers with an interest in Christian apologetics will surely enjoy this one. (Click for video.)

The brute dishonesty and ignorance with which the Los Angeles Times opines on issues related to the Catholic Church never ceases to astound. The latest shameful entry is an error-ridden and misleading editorial (Wed. 4/1/09) on the Obama-Notre Dame scandal. This follows an equally fallacious opinion piece from Tim Rutten just a few days ago.

The article begins by slamming those who oppose Obama's appearance at Notre Dame as "seem[ing] to believe they are more Catholic than the pope." It also besmirches the Cardinal Newman Society, a leading voice in opposition to Obama's appearance, as "a self-appointed guardian of orthodoxy."

What the Times doesn't tell its readership (whose number continues to dwindle) is that protesters of Obama's appearance simply want to uphold what the full body of United States Catholic bishops boldly declared in a statement five years ago:

The Catholic community and Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles. They should not be given awards, honors or platforms which would suggest support for their actions.

If the Los Angeles Times' Tim Rutten is determined to establish himself as one of the nation's worst journalists when it comes to writing on the issues of abortion and Catholicism, he's doing a helluva job. His latest column on the Obama-Notre Dame controversy unfairly characterizes pro-lifers and misrepresents the scandal.

Here's how Rutten portrays pro-life Catholics who are protesting President Obama's appearance at Notre Dame:

Some people just won't be happy until the Inquisition has office space again and kindling is being piled up around the local stakes.

Puh-leeze. Rutten is completely ignorant to the fact that those who protest Obama's appearance are simply seeking to uphold what the full body of United States Catholic bishops declared five years ago:

The Catholic community and Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles. They should not be given awards, honors or platforms which would suggest support for their actions.

And if Rutten or anyone else is unclear as to what those "fundamental moral principles" include, the very same document states:

[T]he killing of an unborn child is always intrinsically evil and can never be justified.

Got it?

Media outlets including CNN, Time magazine, and the Los Angeles Times are reporting that "over 1 million" women in Brazil illegally terminate their pregnancies every year. (Abortion is illegal there, except under rare circumstances.) However, this figure appears to originate from a group called Ipas, an organization dedicated to "advancing women's reproductive rights." It openly endorses legalized abortion.

And besides the dubious nature of the source, history tells us that this "1 million" number should be looked upon very suspiciously.

According to New York University instructor Jacob Appel, Kansas' notorious late-term abortionist George Tiller should be looked upon as "a genuine hero who ranks alongside Susan B. Anthony and Martin Luther King Jr. in the pantheon of defenders of human liberty." Good ... grief. Just when I thought I've read it all.

Appel formulated his sick view in a letter to the editor in today's Los Angeles Times (Sun. 3/22/09).

Tiller's practice is truly an abomination. His office has reportedly instructed women to expel their late-term unborn babies into a toilet. (See this eye-opening segment from the O'Reilly Factor from 12/12/2006.) Tiller currently faces 19 counts of "violating the state's late-term abortion law." Yet Appel says Tiller should be held "in esteem."

As we've stated before, no one can challenge the awful harm wrecked upon youth at the hands of Catholic clergy. The harm is real, incredibly sad, and unspeakably damaging. But that is no excuse for the Los Angeles Times to continue its dishonest practice of false and misleading presentations on the narrative of Cardinal Roger Mahony and the Los Angeles Catholic Church abuse scandal.

The latest offense from the Times is a dishonest op-ed (Tue. 2/3/09) from ex-staffer William Lobdell, who just-so-happens to be promoting a new book that's out in three weeks.

Does anyone think that a major newspaper like the Los Angeles Times would ever allow a hateful and patently false anti-Semitic or anti-Muslim personal attack to be published in its letters to the editor? Of course not. But check out this whopper of anti-Catholic vitriol that is in the pages of the Times today (Mon. 2/2/09):

The Jesuits have a saying, "Give me the boy until he is 7, and I will give you the man." You can now add, "Give Adolf Hitler the boy until he is 7, and he will give you the pope."

RALPH WETTERHAHN
Long Beach

As we've noted several times before, Los Angeles Times Opinion Editor Tim Rutten hardly misses an opportunity to bash the Catholic Church. So imagine my shock and amazement when I picked up his Saturday column (1/30/09). Rutten rips a reported federal grand jury investigation of L.A. Cardinal Roger Mahony's handling of the abuse scandal as "frivolous" and "overreaching." (For the record, the archdiocese's attorney has said that he was told that Mahony is not a target of an inquiry.)

Did a wave of clarity and sanity suddenly overcome Rutten? Rather than bellowing the hysterical falsehoods that have often been aired in the Times and in the media in recent years, Rutten's must-read piece wipes away a number of myths.

As we reported a couple days ago, when a veteran middle-school teacher in nearby Santa Monica pleaded guilty last month to "multiple counts of illegal sex acts" and molesting nine young girls, the Los Angeles Times didn't print a single syllable about it in their paper. Not one. The teacher was sentenced to 14 years in state prison. Although the Times had reported the teacher's original arrest and some follow-up last May and June, the story of the teacher's guilty plea and sentencing only made it to the paper's blog.

Now look at the front page of today's Times' 'California' B section (Sat. 1/31/09). Prominently displayed on the top of the page are two color photos related to the sentencing yesterday (1/30/09) of a former Catholic priest.

When a veteran middle-school teacher in nearby Santa Monica pleaded guilty last month to "multiple counts of illegal sex acts" and molesting nine young girls, the Los Angeles Times didn't feel the story warranted their newspaper. Although the Times had reported the teacher's original arrest and some follow-up last May and June, the news of teacher's guilty plea only went as far as the paper's blog.

Last November, a coordinator for the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) filed a discrimination lawsuit against his employer. The suit included the astonishing charge that the district assigned a principal to a middle school even though it knew the guy had recently faced a molestation-related investigation. Within months of his new assignment, the principal was arrested and charged with molesting four students. Again, although the paper had reported other episodes of this particular narrative, the Times jettisoned the news of this stunning lawsuit to the paper's blog and never reported it in their actual paper.

Cut to the front page of Thursday's Los Angeles Times (1/29/09). Above the fold, with an accompanying color photo, is the headline, "Mahony investigated over abusive priests."

It could be Christmas approaching, or it could be the Catholic Church's success last month in its support of Proposition 8, the initiative to restore marriage in California. But it's curious to see what's been on the minds of the folks at the Los Angeles Times in the past few weeks:

1. "Pope's new edict on the priesthood" (Mon. Nov. 17, 2008, editorial): The Times finds it "troubling" that the Church employs psychologists to screen candidates for the priesthood. It also goes without saying that the Times does not like the Church's policy of disallowing men with "deep-seated" homosexual tendencies to be priests. In the end, the Times finds the Church's policies "cruel" and "unprofessional."

2. "What would Mary do?" (Sun. Nov. 30, 2008, editorial): Surprise! The Times likes the idea of women priests in the Catholic Church.

A December 7, 2008, wire article by the Associated Press' David Espo claims, "[Former Army chief of staff Gen. Eric] Shinseki was forced into retirement by the Bush administration after he said the original invasion plan for Iraq did not include enough troops." (President-elect Obama recently announced Gen. Shinseki would head the Veterans Affairs Department.)

The truth? No such thing happened. FactCheck.org, among other sources, debunked this myth over four years ago.

On Sunday's episode of "60 Minutes" (11/30/08), Lara Logan profiled Army hero Private Monica Brown, an 18-year-old medic who was awarded the Silver Star. Yet as wonderful as Brown's heroics were, Logan's profile could not shake the impression that it really wanted to get in some cheap shots at the United States military. Here's how Logan opened her piece:

Private Monica Brown is only the second woman to be awarded the Silver Star since the Second World War. She’s an Army medic who risked her own life to save two critically wounded paratroopers of the 82nd airborne division in Afghanistan.

O.K. so far. But then Logan abruptly switched gears:

Under Army regulations, women cannot be assigned to front-line combat units, but in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq today, that’s exactly where they often end up. Some male soldiers aren’t so happy about that, including members of Private Brown’s own unit. But her superior officers say she’s a hero, a hero who earned one of the military’s highest awards for exceptional valor when she was only 18 years old.

That women "cannot be assigned to front-line combat units" is a theme that Logan hammered throughout her piece. The problem? Private Brown was not on a front-line combat mission. As Logan's own story indicated, Brown was a medic in a unit that had been "searching for weapons in a village" when it was ambushed while returning to base. (By the way, Logan identifies those who ambushed our men and woman simply as "hidden enemy fighters.")

Let's see if I got this straight: Hundreds of supporters of gay marriage, opponents of California Proposition 8, have picketed a Mexican restaurant in L.A. and shouted vulgarities at innocent customers just because one employee - a daughter of the owner - gave a modest $100 donation in support of the measure protecting traditional marriage. Opponents of Proposition 8 have threatened and harassed several other businesses - including a radio station, a theatre, and a chain of health food stores - because employees gave money in support of Prop 8. Opponents of Prop 8 have knocked a cross from the hands of an elderly woman and stomped on it during a demonstration in Palm Springs. Suspicious white powder has been sent in an envelope to a Mormon temple in Westwood. (Mormons were big supporters of Prop 8.)

And the supporters of Proposition 8? Well, their measure - which sought to restore the definition of marriage between only a man and a woman - won in a statewide referendum by a 52 to 48 margin. They simply want judges to respect the vote and uphold its result.

So what does the Los Angeles Times' Tim Rutten have to say about all of this? He says in his November 15 column that "both sides" "are going too far" and "need to cool down."

"Both sides" "need to cool down"? "Both sides"?

[HT: Patterico.] Check out the headline from the November 14, 2008, column by Los Angeles Times "media critic" James Rainey:

Right-wing radio sounds false alarm on 'Fairness Doctrine': Impose a mandate on broadcasters to balance their political views? That would be onerous indeed. But memo to Rush: Nobody's asking for that.

"Nobody's asking for that"? Not quite. As Patterico and Hot Air's Ed Morrissey have pointed out with video testimony, Sen. Chuck Schumer, for one, is quite hip to the idea.

A man who was a special education aide for the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) "already accused of videotaping himself molesting teenage girls in his private basketball program," was charged October 17 with "having sexual contact with four more, including one who says he took her to a local hotel room for a weekend of sex" (LA Daily News). "In all, seven girls, most about 15, [have] told police [the man] had talked dirty, fondled or performed sexual acts on them ... [T]he former Birmingham High assistant football coach faces 14 felony and three misdemeanor charges, and more than 30 years in prison if he's convicted, said Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney Alisanne Scolnik."

Yet one place you won't read about this story is in the Los Angeles Times. Do you think if this man were a Catholic priest, the Times would fail to report these new awful allegations against this guy? Of course not.

NBC's Brian Williams surely made the abortion lobby smile this week when he asked Sarah Palin in an interview, "Is an abortion clinic bomber a terrorist?" There's few things that abortion defenders love more than painting pro-lifers as violent bombers, arsonists, and assassins. But reality paints a different picture. The facts (pdf):

• There have been zero murders of abortionists and abortion clinic workers in the United States and Canada this decade. The last "attempted murder" was eight years ago, in 2000.
• There were zero such murders in the United States and Canada between 1973 and 1992.
• There has been one bombing of an abortion clinic so far this decade.

In an error-ridden op-ed in Friday's Los Angeles Times (10/17/08), Pepperdine law professor Douglas Kmiec makes the outrageous claim that Barack Obama "has held himself out as a bridge builder" on the issue of abortion. Kmiec then advances a fallacious case that a faithful Catholic can vote in clear conscience for Barack Obama.

A "bridge builder" on abortion? Is Kmiec kidding?? Consider:

• Obama has forcefully vowed that his very first act as President would be to sign the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA). FOCA claims a "fundamental right" to abortion throughout all nine months of pregnancy, and no government body at any level would be able to "deny or interfere with" this right. Even the pro-choice NOW readily acknowledges that FOCA would literally "sweep away hundreds of anti-abortion laws [and] policies."

• Obama has a 0% rating from the National Right to Life Committee and 100% rating from NARAL Pro-Choice America.


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What's bothering the Los Angeles Times's Rosa Brooks now? She doesn't like how the McCain-Palin ticket has noted that Barack Obama said on the campaign trail that our troops in Afghanistan are "just air-raiding villages and killing civilians." 

Yet Brooks declares that Barack Obama was essentially "correct" when he said this. ("Obama's no troop-hater: Lost in the debate about 'air-raiding villages' is that Obama's correct." (Sun., 10/19/08))

The fervent cheerleading for Barack Obama by the Los Angeles Times continues to roar. We've documented the staunch pro-Obama position at the Times several times before: here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here - for starters. Now check out the images from today's front page (Sun. 10/12/08). While a comfortable Barack Obama happily basks in the sun in a bright backdrop of red, white, and blue, a frail-looking John McCain is pictured in the dark with a faint and blurry flag in the distance. Equal coverage? Not even close.

Then there's the accompanying article, "Obama rides a wave of bad economic news." The Times happily cribs from the hackneyed "lifelong Republican-turned-Democrat" playbook:

In the summer of 2001, the liberal organization FAIR published a report about what they perceived to be a conservative bias at Fox News Channel. In "The Most Biased Name in News," FAIR's Seth Ackerman wrote:

Even Fox's "left-right" debate show, Hannity & Colmes--whose Crossfire-style format virtually imposes numerical equality between conservatives and "liberals"--can't shake the impression of resembling a Harlem Globetrotters game ...

Now check this out. Two years later, Al Franken published a bestselling book, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them. On page 63 (first edition, hardcover), Franken wrote,

For those of you unfamiliar with the Hannity and Colmes dynamic, it's a conservative-versus-liberal talking head show, kind of a combination between Crossfire and a Harlem Globetrotters game.

"Crossfire"? "A Harlem Globetrotters game"? "Conservatives"? "Liberals"? Yikes. Many people would call this plagiarism. And in his 2005 book, Pants on Fire: How Al Franken Lies, Smears, and Deceives, writer Alan Skorski provides compelling evidence that "Franken appears to have plagiarized" several passages of his book from FAIR's 2001 report.

Let's ask again: Where is the national media? The sex abuse scandals at the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) continue to grow. Just since May of this year:

• A high school athletic coach was charged with 12 felony counts of sexually assaulting an underage girl, including "five counts of sexual penetration with a foreign object while the victim was unconscious and one count of possession of child pornography." "[P]olice said they believe there may be other victims." The man was also a special education assistant (link).
• A former Special Education high school teacher was sentenced to three years in prison after charges of lewd conduct, child molestation, and abuse. The alleged crimes involved four of his "particularly vulnerable" students (additional link).
• A high school principal was arrested for child pornography on his home computer. Authorities also discovered that he "had posed as a 12-year-old girl in an online chat room and engaged in sexually explicit talk."
• A high school teacher pleaded guilty and was sentenced to six months in jail for having sex with a minor. County deputies found the teacher and the underage female student in the back of a car in a parking lot.

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