Katie Bell's blog

What is it with this White House and publicly calling out conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh?

If you recall, back in January 2009 President Barack Obama told Republican congressional leaders to quit listening to Limbaugh if they wanted to get things done. It's happened once again. During the White House daily press briefing on July 29, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs took another couple of jabs Limbaugh - this time over the auto manufacturer bailout. In responding to a question concerning charges of "socialism," Gibbs went right after Limbaugh.

"Look, I'll say this - Rush Limbaugh and others wanted to walk away," Gibbs said. "Rush Limbaugh and others saw a million people that work at these factories that worked at these part suppliers that supported communities and thought that we should all just walk away. The president didn't think that walking away from a million jobs in these communities made a lot of economic sense."

What sets The Huffington Post's new travel section apart from the rest? That in addition to travel tips and destination profiles, readers also get a health dose of the sites liberal agenda.

With President Obama coming under fire from Republicans for taking yet another family vacation - this time to Maine - HuffPo jumped to his defense by highlighting a comparison between Obama and his predecessor Bush - in the travel section.

 "The Obamas just returned to Washington from their weekend long excursion to Maine," Kate Auletta wrote. "While the President was given grief about a) taking a vacation and b) taking a vacation that wasn't to the Gulf, Obama's vacation days have really been, in comparison to his predecessors, few and far between. CBS took a look back at the history of presidential vacations."

The post also contained a clip of a CBS news video justifying Obama's frequent vacations by comparing him to Bush, who was widely criticized by the media for trip to his Texas ranch.

"Mommy, why is that lady dancing on stage in her bra?" might have been a common question in American households that were tuned in to NBC's "Today" show July 9.

The broadcast featured performances by and an interview with Lady Gaga, a pop star whose fashion sense is aimed at making eyes pop and jaws drop. For "Today," Gaga donned a white bustier with "strategically placed" rhinestone crucifixes and skin tight white pants for her first two performances. The ensemble, which did not leave much for the imagination, was further impacted when rain started pouring at Rockefeller Plaza.

Lady Gaga's dancers were also dressed provocatively; female dancers wore tight white leotards.

Gaga's "Today" show performance would have been best suited for an evening concert in which the kiddos were left with grandparents or sitters. Many young children were present at the July 9 outdoor morning performance.

Author Frank Schaeffer, son of the late prominent theologian Francis Schaeffer, can't seem to find anything good about evangelical Christians.

In his latest blog on the Huffington Post, Schaeffer criticized evangelicals' support of Israel. "Some of the nuttiest American religious leaders today (and in the past) have latched on to one form or another of Christian Zionism," he said.

"To put it mildly, the evangelical theological/biblical ‘reasons' have deformed US policy and made America act against self interest," Schaeffer wrote. "This has also harmed the state of Israel."

Schaeffer suggested that so-called Christian Zionists "would rather see an innocent Jewish or Palestinian child blown up in a rocket attack as long as the ‘Promised Land' is ‘fully reclaimed' to fulfill their harebrained ideas of biblical prophecy."

Should it be easier for your teenage daughter to get birth control pills without your knowledge? One Newsweek contributor thinks so.

In a July 7 op-ed, Meredith Melnick praised the “movement” to make the Pill more accessible by making it available over the counter, in part because it would remove parents from the equation.

“Teenagers are particularly vulnerable to access problems because it is harder for them to get to a doctor without a parent’s help,” Melnick said.

“Almost 20 percent of sexually active teens who do not want to become pregnant are not using contraceptives, according to the Guttmacher Institute,” Melnick wrote. “And teenage girls who do not use contraception during their first sexual experience are twice as likely to become teen mothers as their counterparts who use protection.”

The "struggle" illegal immigrants face as they seek the same benefits and services afforded to U.S. citizens is the same that faced civil right activists in the middle of the 20th century, according to the Associated Press.

"Students fighting laws that target illegal immigrants are taking a page from the civil rights era," reporter Rusell Contreras wrote, "adopting tactics and gathering praise and momentum from the demonstrators who marched in the streets and sat at segregated lunch counters as they sought to turn the public tide against racial segregation."

Contreras cited several illegal immigrant activists comparing themselves to protestors of the civil rights era. He compared the fact that undocumented students "don't qualify for federal financial aid and can't get in-state tuition rates in some places" to the segregation of black and Mexican-American students in the 1950s.

Don't look now, but it seems the media have suddenly discovered a respect for states' rights. All it took was a Supreme Court ruling affirming the Second Amendment's role in protecting gun owners' rights from state or local infringement.

Newsweek called the ruling "bad news" for gun controllers because "the right to ‘keep and bear arms' in the U.S. Constitution's 2nd Amendment restricts state and local power to impose gun controls."

The ruling found that local and state governments cannot simply ban gun ownership. It left the door open for some restrictions, but the extent of those restrictions remains largely untested.

CNN declared the ruling "a potentially far-reaching case over the ability of state and local governments to enforce limits on weapons."

Newsweek blogger Ben Adler thinks the national media are giving the Tea Parties gentle treatment.

"Unfortunately," Adler wrote in a June 21 post, "what appear to be false notions of objectivity - or perhaps a lack of interest in policy - is preventing that coverage from illuminating what the movement actually represents and what it would do if empowered."

Adler complained that a recent Associated Press article, "Enraged to Engaged: Tea partiers explain why," failed to examine the ideology of the demonstrators in the grassroots conservative movement.

"The piece examines how and why a variety of individuals became involved in the Tea Party movement without once asking what precisely the platform consists of," Adler said, leading one to wonder if he even read the article.

Author and blogger Frank Schaeffer really, really doesn't like what he calls "evangelical/fundamentalist" Christians. In the past, he's suggested that their "hatemongering" was responsible for the "continuing ugliness of the response to President Obama." And now, in a new blog on The Huffington Post, he's calling for the "eradication" of fundamentalist Christianity.

"The next great task for the human race is to wean ourselves off literal interpretations of religion. We need to eradicate fundamentalism in all its forms," Schaeffer wrote. "Atheism is no help," he later added.

It is no surprise that he feels this way toward Christianity. After all, it flies in the face of liberal ideology, which promotes gay marriage and heterosexual cohabitation before marriage.

Right on cue, Schaeffer used the blog promote the gay agenda, beginning in the fifth paragraph.  Killing two birds with one stone he attacked the Church in America and promoted the homosexual lifestyle. Schaeffer praised, "Those of us who have no problem with celebrating the fact that some people are created gay, or that other people live with a girlfriend or boyfriend because marriage isn't always the best way to relate to a lover" as having a wider circle of acceptance.

The headline sounds sensational: "Cop punches girl in face during jaywalk arrest." That's how the June 17 NBC "Today" show began what might appear to be an even-handed story. But a closer look at what the network aired and what it left out show a far different result.

The morning segment repeatedly played a clip highlighting what Matt Lauer referred to as a "violent arrest" - a police officer punching a young woman who interfered in the arrest of the jaywalker. That clip was shown 14 times during the segment.

After the first showing of the clip, Lee Cowan told viewers, "Watch again, he closes his fist, winds up and lands a hard right to her face." Time and again, the segment returned to the video clip showing the police officer punch the 17-year-old.

Here's what they left out.

(full video below the fold)

Most Americans believe the concepts of fidelity and marriage go hand in hand. However, with the help of a former president, one married couple has set out to prove otherwise.

"It was Bill Clinton who first got Christopher Ryan thinking about monogamy," Washington Post Staff Writer Ellen McCarthy said of Ryan's new book "Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality."

Ryan was a doctoral student during the scandal surrounding Clinton's sexual affair with an intern, Monica Lewinsky, according to McCarthy. It made him wonder: "How is it that the most powerful man in the world is getting publicly humiliated for having a casual sexual relationship with someone?"

The book suggests that "we reevaluate the idea that monogamy comes naturally to men and women-and look at whether it should even be something we require of our spouses." Ryan wrote the book with his wife, psychiatrist Cacilda Jethá.