MRC President and NewsBusters Publisher Brent Bozell appeared on the May 9 edition of Fox News Channel's "Fox & Friends" to discuss media coverage of the Democratic primary race. Bozell held that while the conventional wisdom that Clinton's candidacy is all-but-over may be accurate, political reporters who should be objectively reporting the campaign have taken on the role of pundits and commentators. What's more, Bozell added, it's precisely this sort of cheerleading by the referees that has called the game for Obama well before the clock's run out. [audio available here]

Here's something you probably never thought in your wildest dreams you'd hear a Democrat say about MSNBC "Hardball" host Chris Matthews:

Do I think he is shamelessly biased and doesn’t care about being biased? Absolutely.

Be still my heart.

As I'm sure you're in as much disbelief as I, and must hear it from the horse's mouth so to speak, the following was reported by The Hill Monday, and somehow slipped underneath the radar until NB member Par for the Course made me aware of it moments ago (emphasis added):

Is it the province of a "correspondent" of an ostensibly objective network to proclaim the tactics of a presidential candidate "inappropriate"? Apparently so, when the network is MSNBC and the correspondent David Shuster. The frequent sidekick to Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann got into it with Pat Buchanan on today's Morning Joe.

Shuster spoke out against Hillary's rough-'n-tumble end-game tactics, while a feisty Buchanan defended Clinton's right to go down swinging. Shuster sounded less the reporter and more the DNC member concerned about damage to the party's presumptive presidential candidate. When Mike Barnicle got into the act, he wanted to be sure not to be seen as insulting the Clintons.

View video here.

DAVID SHUSTER: What is the plausible scenario for what she's doing now, and do you agree, the only plausible scenario is that she's just trying to permanently damage Barack Obama?

MIKE BARNICLE: What about this one, David? What about the fact that, listen, not speaking ill of either former President Clinton or Senator Clinton [God forbid!], but this is all they've ever done in their lives. They've never worked at a private job, they've never worked in corporate America [Rose law firm?], they've been public people for 30 years. All they know is running! That's all they know: that's who they are.

Update (Ken Shepherd | May 9): Our good friend Mark Levin sent along an audio clip from his May 8 radio program wherein he addressed Jon Stewart's ludicrous comparison.You can access the audio here.

On Wednesday night’s edition of The Daily Show on Comedy Central, host Jon Stewart interviewed John McCain. As part of his ongoing outrage that the Reverend Wright issue would be raised against Barack Obama, Stewart sprung it on McCain that President Bush is his own Reverend Wright problem. He liked this “fascinating” analysis so much he repeated it, and suggested when it comes to Team Bush and al-Qaeda, “our policies are their Reverend Wright-- isn't he the guy they throw out there and inflame their base and get support? Don't you think he's actually been okay for al-Qaeda?” McCain answered by declaring the terrorists were a “transcendent evil” beyond one politician.

Stewart seemed to be citing an NBC poll (slightly wrongly) that found 32 percent of voters expressed concern about Obama’s relationship with Rev. Wright, but 43 percent were concerned by Sen. McCain’s relationship to President Bush. Stewart formulated his jokey question as if he were about to question McCain about being endorsed by harshly anti-Catholic minister John Hagee:

CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, during a much hyped interview of Barack Obama on Thursday’s "The Situation Room," tried to dismiss facts about the Illinois Senator’s as mere opinions. First, the CNN host made a prediction about the upcoming general election campaign: "You know they're going to paint you -- the McCain camp, Republicans -- as a classic tax and spend liberal Democrat, that you are going to raise the taxes for the American people, and to spend money like there's no tomorrow when it comes to federal government programs. You ready to handle that kind of assault?"

Was it Hardball—or the World Series of Poker? Interviewing Hillary's Howard Wolfson today, Chris Matthews accused the Clinton campaign of playing the white race card. Just minutes later, when Wolfson suggested Matthews might be discriminating against Puerto Rican voters, Chris protested "don't play that card on me."

View video here.

Matthews began the showdown by rolling tape of Hillary repeatedly telling USA Today that she had stronger support than Obama among "white" voters.

On Thursday’s CBS "Early Show" co-host Harry Smith fretted over Hillary Clinton’s refusal to drop out of the presidential race and pressed Clinton campaign manager Terry McAuliffe on why she is still in the race: "Let me show you some headlines this morning. From this morning's Daily News, 'It's His Party,' with a picture of Barack Obama. From the New York Post, 'Over the Hill,' you know what they're talking about there. From The Wall Street Journal, 'Democrats Look to Life After Clinton.' Terry McAuliffe, why is your candidate still in this race?"

After that introduction, Smith went on to try to convince McAuliffe that the situation was futile:

SMITH: Can you formulate a scenario, though, in which she actually mathematically can get this nomination?

MCAULIFFE: Sure. She can move ahead in the popular vote. We're assuming we get Michigan and Florida resolved. Because there are --

SMITH: Excuse me. Everything Howard Dean has said so far as though that's all off the table. That is not going to happen. Those states took themselves out of the process.

John McCain’s anti-woman philosophy will guide him to appoint Supreme Court justices that will roll back civil rights, according to Joy Behar. Discussing the 2008 election on the May 8 edition of "The View," political pundit, Catholic theologian, and constitutional scholar Joy Behar offered her theory on why white women will vote for Obama, assuming he is the nominee, and even called Roe v. Wade "civil rights legislation."

"When these women, these white women that love Hillary so much, you know, there’s a lot of white, he gets the women vote. When they realize that McCain is going to load the Supreme Court up with more conservative justices who are going to probably roll back or try to roll back Roe v. Wade, civil rights legislation, you are going to see those white women go to the polls and vote for Obama."

Elisabeth Hasselbeck noted the absurdity of Behar’s point calling it "such a broad statement" and "an extreme prediction." Joy Behar proceeded to call McCain ideologically "off the wall" and repeated her recounting of labeling McCain "anti-woman" because he’ll allegedly appoint justices that will overturn Roe v. Wade.

The entire transcript is below.

"Good Morning America" news anchor Chris Cuomo on Thursday aggressively told top Hillary Clinton aide Howard Wolfson that it's time for the senator to get out of the race and allow Barack Obama to begin his general election campaign. At one point, after the communication director suggested that Clinton would do better than Obama in states such as West Virginia, an irritated Cuomo sputtered, "If you're going out there, as communication director of your campaign, telling super delegates Barack can't win against McCain, how is that helping the Democrats?"

When Wolfson repeated his argument that Hillary could capture West Virginia, Cuomo helpfully suggested, "And what a great contribution that might be for a vice presidential candidate." Earlier in the segment, the ABC anchor, who is the son of former New York Democratic Governor Mario Cuomo and brother to the state's current Democratic attorney general, insisted, " Why isn't this the time to get out?" An ABC graphic, just below Cuomo, reiterated, "Clinton Hangs On: How Can She Remain in Race?"

The Catholic-majority Supreme Court has no respect for nuns. That's the new media meme about a recent Supreme Court ruling upholding an Indiana voter ID law. That very same law, the media would have us believe, "barred" or "turned away" from voting 12 nuns in South Bend on the Hoosier State's May 6 primary. Of course as a simple read of the Indiana Secretary of State's Web site shows, that's utter nun-sense. but Time's Karen Tumulty has picked up on it twice over at that magazine's Swampland blog.

This from a post yesterday informing readers of a news conference to be held today at 1 p.m. EDT:

Surely, our majority-Catholic Supreme Court should have known better than to get on the wrong side of the Sisters. As we wrote earlier, the first victims of the new ruling on Voter ID were elderly nuns in Indiana. This just in, in my emailbox: The nuns of Missouri rap the Supreme Court's knuckles with a great big ruler:

"Thrill up my leg"? Forget about it. Chris Matthews's famous description of the excitement he gets from Barack is nothing compared to the tumescent terms in which MSNBC senior campaign correspondent Tucker Carlson has depicted the intensity of the MSM's love affair with Obama. Tucker appeared on today's Morning Joe.

TUCKER CARLSON: It's gonna be such a great election; it has been so far.

JOE SCARBOROUGH: Especially when you have the media loving one candidate as much as they love Barack Obama.

CARLSON: But it's more than love. I mean, it's the kind of love that anybody who's been a 9th-grade boy understands this species of love. Do you know what I mean?

MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Wow.

SCARBOROUGH: No, it's the truth. It's all-consuming.

CARLSON: It's red-in-the-face, I-think-about-you-when-I-go-to-bed, too embarrassed to stand up, it's sealed-with-a-kiss love. I mean, it's real, it's palpable.

It was just another ho-hum piece by another liberal columnist. Hillary Clinton should get out now because staying in hurts Barack Obama against McCain. Yada yada yada.

But in his column of today, Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times, almost in passing, makes what is, on reflection, a telling disclosure of what is truly the fundamental value, the uniting principle of the Democratic party: abortion. After first fretting that many Hillary supporters will sit on their hands or vote for McCain, Kristof offers this countervailing fact:

It’s true that most of Senator Clinton’s supporters presumably will flinch if they contemplate a McCain Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade.

There can be little doubt now that Old Media is applying full-court pressure to anoint Barack Obama with the Democratic nomination, and on Hillary Clinton to drop out of the race.

The New York Times's stories for tomorrow's print edition ("Support for Clinton Wanes as Obama Sees Finish Line" and "Pundits Declare the Race Over") clearly point in those directions. The first describes North Carolina as "a decisive loss" for Mrs. Clinton. The second shows how determined the Times appears to be to come up with evidence that Obama has the nomination in the bag, as it actually notes the despised Matt Drudge's headline link earier today to Tim Russert's "The Nominee" video.

Wait a minute.

Jim Geraghty at National Review online appears to be about the only person to have caught the obvious: Barack Obama's overwhelming support from African-Americans means that he performed miserably with the rest of the voters.

Did he ever:

Wednesday’s broadcast network morning shows sounded eager to drum Hillary Clinton out of the Democratic presidential race and turn all critical eyes on John McCain. NBC was most emphatic. Today ran MSNBC midnight footage of Tim Russert declaring Barack Obama the winner: "We now know who the Democratic nominee is gonna be and no one is gonna dispute it." Russert added live: "I cannot find an objective Democrat who does not think this race is over." On ABC, George Stephanopoulos endorsed the New York tabloid newspaper headlines: "Toast. Hil Needs a Miracle. That's exactly right....this nomination fight is over." On CBS, co-host Harry Smith suggested to Bob Schieffer: "Bob, this party needs a nominee and fast. What do you think? Will Hillary Clinton get out, and when?" Schieffer declared "This race is over."

The same message came through in the screen graphics. For example, ABC pictured Mrs. Clinton with the words "End of the Road?" as co-host Robin Roberts began the show: "This morning, is it over?" NBC’s Matt Lauer also asked "Is it over?" and so did the NBC screen. The segments to follow answered the question with an emphatic yes.

I'm no medical doctor or psychiatrist, but I believe there's a disturbing condition sweeping the left-wing blogosphere, closely related to the well-documented malady of Bush Derangement Syndrome. Call it Limbaugh Derangement Syndrome if you will, and I will.

What else do you call it when a lib blogger compares the radio talk show host to agitators of Rwandan genocide? From Jeffrey Feldman's May 7 blog over at Huffington Post (emphasis mine; h/t NRO's Kathryn Jean Lopez):

The right-wing pundit's 'orders' to his Republican listeners have been clear: vote in the Democratic primaries as a coordinated tactic for sewing [sic] division in the opposition party. The goal of such 'chaos,' Limbaugh has stated explicitly, is to foment hatred between different parts of the Democratic Party leading, ultimately, to street riots during the Denver convention.

The ongoing incident raises a serious question:

How far left do you have to be to make the networks' progressive candidates dream team? CBS News Senior Political Correspondent Jeff Greenfield twice referred to Sens. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) as "relatively liberal senators" during a live interview on Washington, D.C.'s WTOP News this morning during drive time.

Discussing the Indiana and North Carolina Democratic primaries, Greenfield first described Obama and Clinton as "both relatively liberal senators," and then later as "relatively liberal senators from blue states."

Given that both have widely-recognized liberal voting records, with the National Journal naming Obama as "the most liberal" member of the U.S. Senate -- even to the left of Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) and socialist Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) -- one wonders what an actual "liberal" would look like to Mr. Greenfield. Would it be Raul Castro? Ted Turner? Who?

This morning's "Fox & Friends" repeated some misreporting on a dozen nuns who were supposedly "barred" from voting yesterday at their South Bend, Indiana, polling station due to lack of proper ID. As I noted in my May 6 blog entry, the sisters were not refused the vote, they chose not to vote using the provisional balloting option. [audio available here]

As the AP's Deborah Hastings reported in an early draft that was later excised from her story:

They weren't given provisional ballots because it would be impossible to get them to a motor vehicle branch and back in the 10-day time frame allotted by the law, Sister McGuire said. "You have to remember that some of these ladies don't walk well. They're in wheelchairs or on walkers or electric carts."

Of course last night's race between Clinton and Obama was close, but not by a margin of 12 votes. Simply put, these sisters could have voted and opted to not follow up with the validation process should none of the races they voted in remain undecided within the 10-day window. In other words, no one barred these sisters from voting but the sisters themselves.

Are "Totally in the Tank for Obama" media members focusing on Rush Limbaugh's "Operation Chaos" in order to force Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton out of the race?

Consider if you will all of the attention Limbaugh's months-old plan to keep the Democrat nomination process going as long as possible got Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning following Hillary's tough night in North Carolina and Indiana.

Critical update at end of post: El Rushbo sends NewsBusters German article on this subject!

For instance, ABC's Jake Tapper reported the following at his blog late Tuesday evening in a piece called "Is Limbaugh’s Operation Chaos Working?" (emphasis added, picture courtesy Rush Limbaugh.com):