Selection bias from the Associated Press

Many times the bias in the mainstream press shows itself in just the stories it chooses to run. The homeless disappeared from the press when a Democrat was in the White House, President Clinton's vacations were never a big story the way that Reagan's and Bush's have been. Well, another story has crossed the wire tonight that falls, I believe, into the same category. Of All Gas Consumers, Bush May Be Biggest

Getting President Bush from here to there consumes an enormous amount of fuel, whether he's aboard Air Force One, riding in a helicopter or on the ground in a heavily armored limousine. The bill gets steeper every day as the White House is rocked by the same energy prices as regular drivers. Taxpayers still foot the bill.

That is all, of course, absolutely true. There's an enormous amount of energy devoted to moving the President from place to place. And they could try to justify it as a news story because of the current high price of gasoline. But the price of oil was very high in 2000, also, so high that President Clinton felt it necessary to tap the nation's strategic petroleum reserve. All of the consumption issues noted in this article were just as true for President Clinton as they are for President Bush, but if the AP ever ran a piece like this one during the Clinton adminstration, I failed to notice it. I'd be willing to bet that they did not. Certainly, the author of this piece, Jennifer Loven, didn't, as she's the wife of Roger Ballentine, formerly deputy assistant to President Clinton for environmental initiatives and chairman of the White House Climate Change Task Force, and then one of John Kerry's key environmental advisors during the 2004 campaign. (More on Loven's record here - H/T to PowerLine) Lyflines - Lyford's other blog…