Washington Post

Not wanting to leave conservative Protestants out of the fun, today's On Faith page in the Washington Post featured not only the requisite Sally Quinn pontification against the Catholic Church but a Methodist minister's essay on how he hopes that one day all Christians will view as irrelevant and unbinding the Bible's teachings on homosexuality. 

Change it must "or else the Catholic Church may end up like Colonial Williamsburg, with the pageantry, the regalia, red shoes and all, a relic of what was once a vibrant, living institution," Quinn scolded in the concluding paragraph of "Will the Catholic Church become its own relic?" Below the fold on the same page, editors published Methodist minister Adam Hamilton's 9-paragraph item "Citing the Bible for the wrong side of history." The digital version's headline reads "On homosexuality, many Christians get the Bible wrong."

In yesterday's Washington Post, Bob Woodward repeated what the essence of what he wrote about sequestration in his book, “The Price of Politics.”

Why? Because leftist media stooges like MSNBC's Chuck Todd, who is upset that conservatives and Republicans are "begging the media to say it's Obama that started the sequester, not them" (well, in general, Chuck, we'd like to see you tell the truth, but we've long since given up expecting it, let alone begging for it) insist on claiming that it was a Republican idea. It wasn't. Woodward re-elaborates (internal links are in original; bolds are mine):

On Friday February 22, the Washington Post took a double-barreled approach to pushing more gun control In a 52-paragraph front-page story, staff writer Stephanie McCrummen highlighted the efforts of anti-gun activist Susan Beehler, a North Dakota woman “going against the gun culture” in the Roughrider State. Elsewhere in the A-section, staffer Philip Rucker devoted 23 paragraphs to boosting Vice President Biden's push for gun control.

McCrummen's article began by promoting Beehler as, “one activist challenging the status quo.”  Beehler, who herself admits she does not own a gun, started the North Dakota chapter of the Million Moms for Gun Control group, and McCrummen went through a plethora of examples of her efforts to, “find a few other brave souls” to push for greater gun control.

In a February 20 column which lamented as a tragedy the mess that former Rep. Jesse Jackson (D-Ill.) got himself into by improperly using campaign resources for extravagant personal expenses, Washington Post personal finance columnist Michelle Singletary scolded her readers to "think about the mess you might have made of your finances or the financial follies of people you know" before "pass[ing] judgment on the Jacksons."

In a column in which she never mentioned Jackson's party affiliation, Singletary suggested that the Illinois Democrat procured luxury items including a $43,350-gold-plated Rolex watch because he and his wife Sandi were "eager to impress their more wealthy colleagues or the people who run with them in their circle of power and privilege," but she added that it was "[n]ot an excuse, just an observation."

The Washington Post reported yesterday that Spanish-language channel Univision is partnering with ABC News to create a 24-hour news channel called Fusion. This new channel, set to debut late this summer, will aim to attract young, mostly second-generation Hispanics who are more comfortable communicating in English than in Spanish. As the Post notes, Fusion could exert much influence over the opinions of Hispanics. And because Hispanics are growing in number and political influence, Fusion could help shape the outcome of the 2016 election and many more elections to come. The question, therefore, is whether the new channel will be fair and balanced or ideologically driven.

On that front, things don’t look promising. The Post reported on what ABC News president Ben Sherwood said about Fusion: “Sherwood, the ABC news president, says ‘Fusion will be guided by the standards of ABC News.’ But he leaves open the possibility of ‘clearly delineated opinion or advocacy.’” Guided by the standards of ABC News? If that’s the case, Fusion is likely to become yet another appendage of the Left.

On Sunday, 35,000 protestors marched on the Washington Mall urging President Obama to reject the Keystone XL pipeline, giving the Washington Post’s Steven Mufson ample space to hype the march.  In the 20 paragraph expose, the Post fails to label the protestors as liberal once and does not include any quotes from supporters of the pipeline, instead choosing to hype their global warming hysteria.  

Instead, the article is peppered with liberal quotes, while criticizing President Obama from the left:

Leaders of the rally said they wanted to press Obama to follow up on the strong rhetoric in his inaugural address about the need to slow climate change.  The official posters at the rally borrowed Obama’s campaign slogan “forward.”  The read: “Mr. President, Forward-on Climate.”

Last Saturday I noted how the On Faith feature in the February 9 Washington Post celebrated Muslim modesty while trashing American Catholic bishops as being prudish on sex and stubborn in their opposition to the ObamaCare contraception mandate. Well this weekend, the Post continued its hypocritical attack on the Church by complaining that it doesn't listen to women while, well, squelching the op-ed piece of a conservative Catholic woman.

The February 16 On Faith section published two items related to Pope Benedict's announcement on Monday that he was abdicating the papacy at the end of February. Editors ran Lisa Miller's column headlined "Some nuns hope new pope will listen to women," in which the Post religion writer highlighted the calls of feminist nuns for, among other things, an openness by the Church to female priests. Also featured on the page B2 feature was a 7-paragraph item by one Annie Selak, headlined "The church young Catholics want," which included a call for the Church to "dialogue concerning the ordination of women and church teaching on homosexuality." Yet On Faith editors declined to feature in print an excellent piece by a conservative Catholic woman that was published online earlier in the week.

When a news story is too newsworthy to ignore but too embarrassing to the Obama administration to highlight, what's a liberal newspaper editor to do? Why, bury it, of course. That's what Washington Post editors did to Steven Mufson's February 14 story on an inspector general's report finding, surprise, surprise, that taxpayer monies on another Obama-hyped green energy project have gone to waste.

What's more, the Post's editor's assigned the item a boring headline, "Report: Grant to battery company was mismanaged."

Imagine the firestorm of outrage that would be ignited in the liberal media were a conservative paper like the Wall Street Journal to hire a Republican pundit who insulted First Lady Michelle Obama during last year's campaign, even if said pundit subsequently apologized. Now compare that to the silence that most certainly will greet the Washington Post hiring Hilary Rosen as an opinion contributor.

Paul Bedard of the Washington Examiner notes that Rosen -- who infamously snarled that Ann Romney "didn't work a day in her life" -- will co-author" the paper's 'Insider's' column with Republican strategist Ed Rogers" (emphasis mine):

A Washington Post contributor published an article Tuesday amazingly citing as true claims by a - wait for it! - satirical website that former Alaska governor Sarah Palin has taken a job with Al Jazeera.

For her part, the former vice presidential candidate is having a good old time on Twitter at the author's expense:

The Washington Post's Greg Sargent on Tuesday seemed shocked that Joe Scarborough, who he paints as the voice of moderation, agrees more with Democrats on deficit issues than Republicans. On the subject of fiscal problems and the debt, the MSNBC host told Sargent, "I don’t expect to be cheering House Republicans anytime soon."

The left-leaning Post writer asked if, on deficit issues, Scarborough's "views are indeed more in line with Dems than with Republicans." The cable host replied, "yes." He then went on to attack Barack Obama from the left: "I don’t see the Democrats focusing seriously on Entitlements or cuts. The president is even scared to cut defense."

My review of previous NewsBusters posts relating to "Bill Nye the Science Guy" indicates that he's an atheist who doesn't think creationism should be taught in schools and, more pertinent at the moment, such an avid believer in "global warming" aka "climate change" that he believes those who doubt it or that it's caused by human activity are "unpatriotic."

Nye's belief in what I prefer to call "globaloney" appears to be based far more on faith than sound meteorological knowledge, given the alarming ignorance he expressed recently on MSNBC about the origins of the past week's snowstorms in the Northeast. Washington Post Weather Editor Jason Samenow ripped into Nye at the paper's "Capital Weather Gang" blog yesterday (HT Yid With Lid via Instapundit; links are in original; bolds are mine):

Filling in for host Chuck Todd on Friday's MSNBC Daily Rundown, The Washington Post's Chris Cillizza gushed over the popularity of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton: "Hillary Clinton is just day's removed from public office, but a new poll finds her public image soaring. Time to put another log on the 2016 speculation fire....Look, I can't get enough of Hillary Clinton, I'll just admit it. I'm just fascinated by the story." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

Comparing Clinton to a list of other potential 2016 presidential candidates, both Democrats and Republicans, Cillizza proclaimed: "She's more popular than anyone else on this list....These numbers are not terribly surprising, I mean, she just spent four years as our top diplomat."

As NewsBusters reported, CBS News political director John Dickerson a few days before Barack Obama's second inaugural advised the President to destroy the Republican Party.

On the syndicated Chris Matthews Show Sunday, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius went in a completely different direction imploring Obama to "get out of the zero sum game Washington where to do something good on immigration reform he's got to destroy Marco Rubio" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Reporters at the Washington Post need a refresher already on the November elections. Obama beat Romney 51-47; Senate Democrats gained two seats, up to 53; House Democrats gained eight seats, but still trail 234-201. Somehow, the Post says this is a “shellacking.” That’s a word Obama used more accurately after the wave election of 2010, when the Republicans added a historic 63 seats.

In Friday’s Post, reporters David Nakamura and Rosalind Helderman discussed whether Republicans would move toward the center on immigration: “Months after GOP leaders began signaling that the party would shift positions on immigration in response to their shellacking in the November election, Republicans are still working out their stance.” The Post website carried a similar line from an AP article: 

Today's "On Faith" page in the Washington Post featured a puzzling contrast that shows the left-wing media's schizophrenia when it comes to traditional religious faith. The paper's religion section editors ran these two items side-by-side: a Religion News Service (RNS) article that was thoroughly positive about Muslim women who want to design and/or model fashionable yet modest clothing, and Post religion writer Lisa Miller's attack on Catholic bishops for their stances on Christian sexual ethics in general and opposition to the ObamaCare contraception mandate in particular.

In "A Muslim fashion statement: Agency connects modesty-minded models with designers," Omar Sacirbey of RNS opened his 23-paragraph feature with the story of Savannah Uqdah, a devout Muslim woman who at one time aspired to be a fashion model but "didn't want to violate Islam's tenets on modesty." As such, Uqdah "shelved her modeling dreams and instead expressed herself through the fashions she wore." But now that modeling agencies eye a lucrative market in fashionable yet modest attire, Sacirbey notes, women like Uqdah are excited at the potential to live out their dreams.

Complaining about Senate Republicans being dissatisfied with former senator Chuck Hagel's refusal to turn over information related to speeches he delivered that were financed by foreign sources, MSNBC's Tamron Hall this afternoon took a conservative blogger out of context to suggest that even conservatives were frustrated with how the Senate GOP -- which, by the way, is the minority party in the Senate and lacks the votes to thwart a Hagel confirmation -- was handling the confirmation process.

In a February 8 NewsNation segment entitled "Hagel Holdup," Hall lamented that Republican "senators are also demanding that Hagel give them copies of every speech he's made in the past five years. It's a process Washington Post conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin says, quote, 'could be the most inept and disorganized confirmation effort in recent memory.'" While Rubin did write that Friday morning, the Post blogger was referring to the Obama administration and Mr. Hagel, not Republicans. From "A critical weekend for the Hagel nomination" (video follows page break; MP3 audio here):

The February 7 Washington Post ran an in-depth front-page story examining the relationship between Sen. Robert Menendez and a Florida eye doctor under investigation for Medicare fraud.  Despite extensively detailing the controversial relationship between the New Jersey Democrat and the reliably Democratic campaign donor, the Post's Carol Leonnig and Jerry Markon omitted that the FBI is also investigating allegations that Menendez paid for underage prostitutes with girls in the Dominican Republican. Oddly enough, however, the paper's Style section ran another Menendez story, this one by staff writer Manuel Roig-Franzia, which did mention the hooker scandal. Even so, that article, headlined "Behind the gates of this exclusive resort, a scandal brews," was mostly focused on just how exclusive and luxurious Menedez's Dominican getaway was, reading in parts like a promotional travel brochure.

Conservatives might take heart from a recent poll showing a decline in Americans' trust in government.  But Chris Cillizza sees it as a "depressing reality." So wrote Cillizza in his "Fix" column in today's Washington Post.  Indeed, Cillizza's headline, "Are we in the end times of trust in government?", suggests that he finds the development nothing short of potentially apocalyptic.

Let's consider what Thomas Jefferson's had to say about the need for a healthy distrust of government—and speculate as to why the polling news has Chris bummed out. More after the jump.

The media complicity in President Obama's drone strategy gets more and more astonishing with each passing day.

On Wednesday, Britain's Guardian published a piece with the incredible sub-headline "New York Times and Washington Post knew about secret drone base in Saudi Arabia but agreed not to disclose it to the public."

Update (18:53 EST): The Post article in question was updated at 6:35 p.m. to reflect the SPLC connection (see below) | The man who critically injured a Family Research Center security staffer in a shooting last August pleaded guilty on Wednesday to, among other charges, "committing an act of terrorism with the intent to kill." the Associated Press and ABC affiliate WJLA today are reporting. What's more, the suspect in question admitted he was inspired to strike out at the FRC after visiting a liberal website which declared them an anti-gay hate group. That fact,however, was omitted by the Washington Post in their write-up on the story.

Floyd Lee Corkins, "who had been volunteering at a center for gay, lesbian and transgender people"  was apprehended with a handgun, two extra magazines of ammunition and sandwiches from Chick-fil-A, that latter of which he "intended to smear... in the faces of his victims to make a statement about gay rights opponents, [Corkins] acknowledged during a hearing Wednesday," WJLA.com reported on Wednesday afternoon.

The Washington Post announced today that former national editor and staff writer Kevin Merida is the paper's new managing editor, effective immediately. "Kevin is a journalist of remarkable accomplishment, with a record of strong leadership," Post executive editor Marty Baron was quoted in a community relations notice. "He has cultivated a talented staff on the National desk, and he has won the admiration and affection of his colleagues. I'm delighted to have him leading coverage across the entire newsroom,” Baron added.

As my colleague Scott Whitlock noted in September 2008, however, Merida denies that the media exhibit a liberal bias:

Washington Post diplomatic correspondent Anne Gearan has repeatedly blown kisses to Hillary Clinton in the past few months with her gauzy coverage of the departing secretary of state's handling of Benghazi. Today she took her show on the road, make that air, as she appeared on MSNBC's Martin Bashir program with Democratic strategist Kiki McLean and guest host former DNC communications director Karen Finney. With MSNBC looking forward giddily to a possible 2016 presidential run, the segment was titled onscreen as "Until We Meet Again."

Sure "[s]he leaves office without huge accomplishments" like groundbreaking peace talks or the like, but she does have "enormous goodwill around the world," Gearan gushed. "Some of her greatest accomplishments really were just showing up," the Post staffer insisted.

Washington Post In the Loop columnist Al Kamen has once again proven he’s one of the Obama administration’s biggest cheerleaders.  You may recall that he asked readers to choose the First Family’s vacation spot last summer, and dismissed criticism coming from liberals that Obama's second term Cabinet was getting more monochromatic and male.

Well, ol' Al has a new contest for us: picking the title of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's memoir.

The Washington Post somehow calls one of their blogs “Right Turn: Jennifer Rubin’s take from a conservative perspective.” This is an odd title when Rubin complains that a politician is destroying himself and the Republican Party by advocating conservative principles. Rubin was put on the Post op-ed page on Friday trashing Virginia’s Attorney General and GOP candidate for governor this fall: “It is not like I didn’t spot the Ken Cuccinelli train wreck coming up around the bend.”

Then, in another blog from her pro-Israel perch, Rubin blasted Chuck Hagel, but this take did not make the newspaper: “It’s fascinating, actually, to see a nominee of this importance do so poorly. Chuck Hagel, nominated for defense secretary, has gone from awful to atrocious today... It is unclear whether he was not prepped properly, whether he refused to be coached or whether he simply isn’t bright.”

Former senator Chuck Hagel's shoddy performance at his confirmation hearing yesterday has not merely been panned by conservative outlets but also liberal ones. For example, in "What Happened to Hagel?", Daily Beast's Ali Gharib concluded that "a proud statesman" appeared "confused and unsure as he took body shots" from skeptical senators, all the while being unable to explain "some version—any version—of the sober views he's put forward over his years as a foreign policy thinker."John Judis of The New Republic complained that "[f]ormer Sen. Chuck Hagel didn’t acquit himself well.... He was equivocal, often unconvincing, and seemed taken aback by questions that had been swirling around the rightwing blogosphere for weeks."

But leave it to the Washington Post to dutifully carry the Obama administration's water. In his page A3 February 1 story, "Hagel sharply attacked at Senate hearing," Ernesto Londono took aim at the GOP for their "withering criticism" of Hagel. Londono conceded that "at times [Hagel] struggled" but insisted that he "nonetheless offered a full-throated endorsement of the United States' alliance with Israel, insisted he has never advocated for unilateral nuclear disarmament and called Iran an existential threat."