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"Some religious leaders are struggling with President Obama’s support for gay marriage but not the Rev. Jesse Jackson," gushed frequent MSNBC contributor Toure noted in the opening line of his May 17 Time.com "Ideas" blog post as he introduced how he "spoke to the Reverend [Jesse Jackson] about the impact of Obama’s announcement among blacks and the wider community of the faithful."

It goes without saying that the interview was a game of softball in which Toure helpfully lobbed easy questions over the plate to drive home for readers, but particularly those who may be African-American Christians who typically vote Democratic, that it would be great if they could evolve to where President Obama has on same-sex marriage, a "civil rights" and "discrimination" issue.

A week ago, National Journal's Michael Hirsh quoted an unnamed State Department official who claimed that "The war on terror is over. Now that we have killed most of al Qaida, now that people have come to see legitimate means of expression, people who once might have gone into al Qaida see an opportunity for a legitimate Islamism." If it's so over, then why were government officials referenced in Kimberly Dozier's Associated Press report this evening about the state of Al Qaida a year after Osama Bin Laden's death "on condition of anonymity because they say publicly identifying themselves could make them a target of the terrorist group"?

Dozier is a noteworthy exception to the usually dreadful reporting at the wire service, and has a personal reason for having her eyes open. While she was with CBS News in May 2006, she was critically injured by an IED in Iraq. After nine months, she returned to work. According to Wikipedia she joined the AP in the spring of 2010.

Yesterday, as apparently first reported at the Daily Caller, Oklahoma Republican Senator James Imhofe revealed that Environmental Protection Agency Region 6 administrator Al Armendariz had explained his enforcement philosophy towards companies within his jurisdiction as "[C]rucify them ... Find people who are not compliant with the law, and you hit them as hard as you can and you make examples out of them, and there is a deterrent effect there." Remember that Antagonistic Al was referring to those who are "not compliant." A YouTube video of Armendariz's remarks in fuller context is here.

The Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, in what I would hope is only its first version of coverage (but don't count on any follow-up), did its level best to minimize the significance of Armendariz's remarks, with a headline designed to make people think he only said one bad word, and content which tried to emphasize that the administrator reserves his harsh treatment only for actual lawbreakers. At Forbes, Christopher Helman has made mincemeat of that pretense in one very prominent case. 

Yesterday, Time's Joe Klein may have produced the single dumbest analysis post ever. Absurd as it is, it's still important, because it probably betrays Barack Obama's election strategy, with which the press will gleefully cooperate. The strategy is: Make it about anything and everything besides what I and my administration have and haven't done, because it hasn't impressed anyone, and we know it.

Klein's entry (HT Hot Air Headlines) at Time's Swampland, which should be named Fever-Swampland, was so brain-dead that he failed to cite a single example of an incumbent facing reelection (vs. a successor seeking election for the first time) in attempting to make his case:

Jury selection in the trial of two-time Democratic Party presidential candidate and John Kerry's Democratic Party running mate in the 2004 election John Edwards began on Thursday. In the related five-paragraph Associated Press story, Michael Biesecker actually identified Edwards as a Democrat in his fourth of his five paragraphs.

That's not a stellar performance (a Republican or conservative in the kind of trouble Edwards is in would have his or her party identified in either the headline, the first paragraph, or both), but at least the party label is present. As blogger extraordinaire Doug Ross noted earlier this evening, in an 1,800-word item at the Atlantic on Wednesday ("Why the John Edwards Trial Is a Bigger Deal Than You Think"), author and undisclosed former Democratic candidate for statewide office Hampton Dellinger failed to name Edwards's party at all, while figuring out a way to tag something or someone "Republican" five times. Here are the opportunities studiously avoided in his treatise only relating to variations on the word "president" (bolded by me):

Jon Meacham has come down with a particularly virulent strain of Limbaugh Derangement Syndrome that is bringing him to the brink of insanity. How else could one explain the Time magazine writer hailing an anti-Limbaugh speech as "timeless"  just like Jesus's Sermon on the Mount or Lincoln's Gettysburg Address?

Yes, I kid you not, he really went there, and in a Time.com "Ideas" blog post nonetheless (emphasis mine):

An AP report by Rachel Zoll brought to our attention by a NewsBusters tipster headlines a truly weird assertion about GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum ("Santorum benefits from mistaken religious identity"), and submits as evidence an item in a Christian magazine which in turn has its own weird headline ("Catholic Politicians You Thought Were Evangelical").

It turns out that the Christianity Today item tells us that it's not evangelical Christians who misidentify Santorum, whose Roman Catholic faith is well-known. The entity which committed the misidentification by deliberately including the former Pennsylvania senator on a list of "The 25 Most Influential Evangelicals in America" while acknowledging that he is a Catholic was ... Time Magazine, in February 2005. Thus, there is no support for Zoll's headline claiming that many people "mistake" Santorum's "religious identity," and that he somehow "benefits." Zheesh.

On Thursday, over 40 hours after the Pacific Institute's Peter Gleick (pictured here) revealed that he stole documents from the Heartland Institute by posing as one of that organization's board members, Seth Borenstein at the Associated Press finally broke the ice and filed a related three-paragraph "this is boring, you don't need to read it" dispatch. Two hours later, the AP science writer extended it to 500-plus words, but kept the headline as uninformative as possible -- "Scientist admits taking, leaking think-tank papers."

The "clever" failure to describe Gleick as a "climate scientist" (which he is) will dissuade many of those who see the headline from clicking through or reading further. By contrast, the headline at Borenstein's report on February 16 after Gleick (whom Borenstein did not name) disseminated the documents was: "INFLUENCE GAME: Leaks show group's climate efforts." In his longer item, Borenstein (or is it now "Boring-stein," Seth?) posits the howler that what Gleick did "mirrors" the Climategate email revelations which occurred in late 2009 and 2011. In your dreams, pal. The initial item plus excerpts from the longer one are after the jump.

The Associated Press's Seth Borenstein, his wire service, and most of the globaloney-advocating establishment press have a problem relating to development NB's Iris Somberg noted a short time ago.

Peter Gleick, described in a related UK Guardian story as "a water scientist and president of the Pacific Institute," said last week that he "obtained" documents from the Heartland Institute about its strategy to, in part and in Borenstein's words (from his 1,000-word dispatch), "teach schoolchildren skepticism about global warming." Now, Gleick has admitted that he stole them (Gleick's description: "I solicited and received additional materials directly ... under someone else’s name"). Oops. It get worse for Borenstein and the wire service on at least two levels.

During his first hour today, Rush mentioned the reaction of Peter King at Sports illustrated in King's "Monday Morning Quarterback" collection to a paragraph in the magazine's cover story on Jeremy Lin, the New York Knicks' point guard who has broken through from obscurity to phenom during the past two weeks. What King wrote is indeed an interesting giveaway of what I believe is a common but unsupportable media perspective, namely that students at and graduates of elite upper-echelon universities like those in the Ivy League are presumptively free of overt racism, because, well, they're all so enlightened.

Uh, no. As Pablo S. Torre reveals in said cover story:

Sometimes you read the most interesting things in those supposedly boring trade publications.

One such item of interest comes from an article in Manufacturing News (HT to an emailer) written by Richard A. McCormack which is primarily about the Mainland China's designs on the worldwide auto parts industry, including the U.S. Some of the larger American unions are demanding that the administration and Congress take action on what they see as unfair trade practices. One sentence is indicative of a more pervasive problem, and it directly contradicts what the establishment press has been telling Americans for months. It's of particular concern to all Americans because the U.S. government still owns over 25% of General Motors, and reads as follows: "China has told GM that it will not be able to sell its Volt electric vehicle in China unless GM transfers technology to China and produces the vehicle there."

A frequent emailer saw a silver lining in Rand Paul's detention this morning in Nashville by the Transportation Safety Administration which prevented him from speaking at today's March For Life rally in Washington: "Best way to get the MSM to mention pro-life rally."

Well, that's largely true. The local Nashville TV station video posted at Real Clear Politics mentions Paul's prolife purpose up-front, as does a commentary by James Fallows at the Atlantic (who incidentally described the rally as "mammoth"). But my emailer underestimated the lengths to which reporters at the Associated Press would go to keep anything pro-life out of a story. In their 750-word report (saved here for future reference, fair use and discussion purposes), Erik Schelzig and Eileen Sullivan completely misstated why Paul wanted to get on the flight he was not able to board -- which also means that their story's headline is incomplete:

Hollywood's support for liberal causes is extremely well-documented. It thus came as no surprise that a leading actress decided to post her support for Planned Parenthood's baby-killing factory in a "women's magazine" that tilts to the left.

Actress Maggie Gyllenhaal, perhaps most famous for her role as Rachel Dawes in The Dark Knight, shilled for Planned Parenthood in a piece for Glamour Magazine, becoming the latest in a line of celebrities to stump for the "women's health" (translation: child killing) group.

The liberal media have returned to assaulting the crowd reaction at Republican debates. Ken Tucker, a TV critic at Entertainment Weekly (a sister publication of Time magazine), suggested the “mob” was “heavy with malice.” He thought Jon Huntsman would find relief "he didn’t have to stand on-stage Monday night to face the most raucous, roused-rabble audience of any Republican debate held thus far."

Tucker strongly suggested the audience was racist in reaction to a Juan Williams hardball question to Newt Gingrich: “The jeers that erupted the second Williams uttered the phrase ‘black Americans’ was chilling on this Martin Luther King Day.” But not only was there no outcry as Williams used the words “black Americans” early in the question, but the outburst of noise didn’t really erupt until Gingrich said “No” to the Williams question. [MP3 audio available here; video follows page break]

In the annals of fawning coverage of scandal-plagued Democrats, Michael Biesecker's Saturday morning report on John Edwards's illness and its effect on his upcoming trail on campaign finance violations surely must be among the worst.

Biesecker missed at least a half-dozen natural opportunities to tag Edwards as a Democrat, finally doing so in cryptic fashion in his 15th of 17 paragraphs. He didn't identify Edwards as the 2004 vice-presidential candidate until that same paragraph, and in doing so named who was at the top of the GOP ticket (George W. Bush) without naming who was at the top of the Dems' (John Kerry). The AP reporter threw obsequious virtual kisses at a man who betrayed his terminally ill wife while omitting two clearly relevant recent reports, one from an outlet which has scooped the look-the-other-way establishment press time after time in this sad, four-year saga. Here are several paragraphs from Biescecker's blather (some of the many clear opportunities to tag Edwards as a Dem and examples of over-the-top fawning are bolded):

On Friday, two Deputy Secretaries, one at the Department of Transportation and the other at Defense, in their capacities as co-chairs of the National Space-Based Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PNT) Executive Committee, released a one page letter concluding that the modified broadband deployment plan of LightSquared could not coexist with current GPS devices and their spectrum. That's because: a) LightSquared's deployment "would cause harmful interference to many GPS receivers"; b) It would not be "compatible with several GPS-dependent aircraft safety-of-flight systems," and c) "there appear to be no practical solutions" to the problems.

Stories about the release, to the extent they exist, are largely avoiding the mention of "Falcone" (that's hedge fund operator and heavy Obama campaign contributor Philip Falcone, "SEC" (which is investigating Falcone and his hedge fund, and "Obama" (as in President Barack Obama, the beneficiary along with the "Democratic Party" -- another unmentioned term in any variation -- of said contributions). Coverage by Daniel Fisher at Forbes at least brings up Falcone, the SEC, and the Obama administration:

We can forgive Pittsburgh Steelers for avoiding the mention of the name of a certain quarterback who plays for the Denver Broncos in the coming days.

Related forgiveness does not extend to Jesse J. Holland at the Associated Press concerning his coverage of the Supreme Court's u-u-u-unanimous ruling today that religious workers cannot sue for job discrimination. As seen here at a Weekly Standard excerpt, the unanimity of the ruling was in the first sentence of the wire service's initial report. Now look how deep it's buried in the 4:10 p.m. version of Holland's report, and how the AP writer attempted to water down the ruling's significance in the interim (bolds are mine):

A month ago, Aya Batrawy at the Associated Press's Egyptian bureau described those who ransacked the Israeli embassy in Cairo as "protesters," and absurdly asserted in the face of contrary evidence I was able to find in about five minutes that "the historic 1979 peace treaty with Israel ... has never had the support of ordinary Egyptians."

Last week, in the wake of the burning -- more like the gutting -- of the Institut d’Egypte in Cairo and the destruction of and serious damage to thousands of priceless books, manuscripts, documents, and artifacts, Batrawy attempted to deflect blame to the military (which did have a role, as will be seen later) for not sufficiently protecting the building instead of placing it on the arsonists who did the damage. And of course, you'll search in vain for any references to the Muslim Brotherhood, Salafi radicals, or Islam. I guess Batraway didn't want anyone to get any kind of crazy idea that this "Arab Spring" enterprise which Western news outlets so gullibly embraced earlier this year isn't exactly working out. Here are several paragraphs from the AP repoter's dispatch (bolds are mine throughout this post):

Anyone who made the easy prediction that the Associated Press would fail to bring up Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac in its fawning tribute to Barney Frank after his retirement announcement yesterday was correct. Anyone making the easy prediction that the AP would lionize him as a "gay pioneer" was also spot-on.

Also predictably, the wire service's Bob Salsberg and David Espo failed to mention that Frank advocated abolishing Fan and Fred as a dishonest survival tactic during his final reelection campaign in 2010, and of course did nothing visible to make that happen this year. What's really odious in this regard is that the AP pair gave him credit (pun intended) for how he "worked to expand affordable housing," when the Community Reinvestment Act-driven subprime crisis Fan and Fred engendered has sent the housing market levels not seen since World War II. What follows are excerpts from the AP. After that I have a few contrary and clear-headed paragraphs from an Investor's Business Daily editorial, and a little reminder of a 1999 "Present" vote which should have generated controversy, but didn't:

On November 15 (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), I compared how two of the leading wire services, Reuters and the Associated Press, covered the announcement by Geron Corp. of its decision to halt the first government-approved clinical trial involving embryonic stem cells. Reuters fairly noted that "teams working with adult stem cells -- a less ambitious area -- are making good progress." While one could quarrel with the characterization of adult stem cell research as "less ambitious" (unless you throw in cloning, which is what sometimes seems to be embryonic researchers' primary area of intrigue), its "good progress" descriptor was fair. Meanwhile, the Associated Press's coverage of the same story failed to even recognize the existence of adult stem cell research.

Wesley Smith, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute's Center on Human Exceptionalism and an influential prolife author, has observed that the establishment press has largely come down where AP did. A Friday Catholic News Agency item elaborates (bolds are mine):

On Monday, Noel Sheppard at NewsBusters noted how former New York Times op-ed writer (and before that, theater critic) Frank Rich, who now plies whatever his trade is at New York Magazine, criticized MSNBC's Chris Matthews for writing a "man-crush of a biography" about John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated 48 years ago today.

Monday evening, Allahpundit at Hot Air identified a particularly egregious contention in that same very poor Rich piece, namely that "the hate that ended his (JFK's) presidency" which inspired avowed communist and Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald to commit his heinous crimes (Oswald also shot Texas Governor John Connally in JFK's motorcade and killed Dallas police officer J.D. Tippit later that day) came from the right. Really. What follows are selections from Rich's risible self-righteousness:

For those who don't know, ProPublica (bold is mine) "is an independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest. Our work focuses exclusively on truly important stories, stories with 'moral force.' We do this by producing journalism that shines a light on exploitation of the weak by the strong and on the failures of those with power to vindicate the trust placed in them." It has received predominant funding from the Sandler Foundation (yeah, those Sandlers; Herbert Sandler is Chairman). Other contributors include George Soros's Open Society Foundations. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (yeah, him) is also on ProPublica's board.

Translation: They lean left. Nevertheless, the organization's Stephen Engelberg (HT Instapundit) questions whether the Politico had enough information on sexual harassment allegations against Herman Cain to publish a story (bolds are mine):

Time magazine’s Ishaan Tharoor and Nate Rawlings romanticized the Occupy Wall Street crowd in an October 14 news story wrought with melodrama about the left-wing crowd’s tensions with New York City police.

Tharoor and Rawlings opened their article by painting the OWS folks as anxious and the NYPD as practically itching for a confrontation. The trespassing squatters in the privately-owned park were painted as conscientious “activists” and “protesters” whose efforts at cleaning the park were unappreciated by corporate goons who were attempting an "eviction" (emphasis mine):

In a report filed at the Los Angeles Times's Politics Now blog earlier today, Washington Bureau reporter James Oliphant relayed a number of whoppers delivered by Vice President Joe Biden without anything resembling a challenge.

Breaking Biden's bilge into three sections, they involve his claim about the historical origins of the Tea Party, which Biden characterized as a collection of "barbarians" only a month ago (and as "terrorists" two month ago); his hit at Bank of America and its $5 monthly fee for debit-card use; and the nature of the "bailouts" which followed the passage of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) in the fall of 2008. In this first part, I will go after what Biden said about the Tea Party. An excerpt from Oliphant's writeup follows the jump (bolds are mine throughout):

A month before the 9/11 attacks, American missionaries Heather Mercer and Dayna Curry were captured and imprisoned by the Taliban.

Their detention and subsequent rescue by American troops in November 2001 received extensive media coverage at the time, including criticism by "Dateline" correspondent John Larson about their proselytizing in a Muslim country.

So far, however, it seems no mainstream media outlet has caught up with Mercer or Curry for a ten-year anniversary retrospective.

Yesterday, at organized labor's traditional Labor Day picnic at Cincinnati's Coney Island amusement park, Vice President Joe Biden gave the keynote address. His key lines, as reported by Carl Weiser at the Cincinnati Enquirer's Politics Extra blog (video is here at MRC-TV): "... this is a different kind of fight. This is a fight for the heart and soul of the labor movement. This is a fight for the existence of organized labor. You are the only ones who can stop the barbarians at the gate! That’s why they want you so bad.”

Biden's statement is in an important aspect more problematic than the more widely (but not sufficiently widely) noted "son of a b*tches" comment made by Teamsters President James Hoffa Jr. in Detroit yesterday at a Labor Day event President Obama keynoted. While Hoffa was threatening and hateful, he was at least in theory speaking only for Big Labor (though Obama has essentially adopted it by not condemning it). In Cincinnati, Biden, who was elected to serve all citizens of the country, personally characterized a large plurality of those he is supposed to be serving with a word which means "savage, primitive, uncivilized persons." Biden's "barbarians"comment has received very light establishment press coverage, as did what appears to have been a singularly unimpressive number of people who actually heard his speech: