Arizona

Mexican drug cartels have been a problem along the border for a long time. However, in Nogales, Arizona, the cartels have taken things one step further by threatening to shoot police officers with snipers from across the border.

Make sure you check out this post at the Eyeblast blog for more details.

Adam's alchemy: Former New York Times chief political correspondent Adam Nagourney has a gift for turning winning conservative issues into inconvenient political losers for Republicans. Nagourney is now based in California, but he packed his old biased habits, which were on display in Saturday's Times story "In California, Immigration Debate Defines the G.O.P. Race for Governor."

Nagourney argued that Arizona's strict new immigration enforcement law has "hijacked this contest" and "stirred worry" that the Republican nominee will be weakened against Democrat and former California Gov. Jerry Brown. (Yes, that Jerry Brown.) He portrayed being on the strong side of a popular issue as a stumbling block for California's G.O.P. gubernatorial candidates:

NewsBusters Publisher Brent Bozell appeared on WMAL's "Grandy Group" shortly after 8 a.m. this morning.

The Media Research Center President discussed the media's anti-Israel bias flaring up afresh after the Gaza flotilla incident (click image at right for MP3 audio):

FRED GRANDY, host:  You follow this more closely than do I. Um, over the last three or four days, has al-Jazeera acquired NBC, CBS, ABC, all the major outlets, because it seems there's such a clear media bias against what Israel did that it's hard for the truth to get out. Who ever thought that Benjamin Netanyahu and Joe Biden would be the two guys speaking truth to power on this?!

BRENT BOZELL:  You know, it's very sad but this is a continuation of a narrative we've seen since the late 1980s with the intifadas that Palestine was launching against Israel where Palestine was always the innocent one and Israel was always the aggressor. You've got to put the story into context.

Catching up on an item from the Thursday, May 20, The View on ABC, comedian George Lopez appeared as a guest and made a few anti-Sarah Palin cracks as he joked with the group about the new immigration law in Arizona, asserting that if Palin were to become President, he and other Latinos would flee the country: "This is the answer to immigration, I'm going to tell you right now. This is how to get every Latino to go back to where they came from: Elect her President in 2012. ... We will leave voluntarily. We'll leave. We'll go voluntarily and take Canadians with us."

He soon joked about Palin fitting the "profile" of a Latina: "Sarah Palin needs to be careful because she fits the profile of a Latina. ... Her and her daughter have a kid the same age. ... She works and her husband don't. ... She talks a lot of smack and he don't say one word. That's very Latino. But he's a stay-at-home dad. Where I come from, if you're a stay-at-home dad, your ass is unemployed."

On Saturday’s Fox News Watch, as the panel discussed revelations that Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano admitted to not having read the Arizona immigration law even as they criticized it publicly, FNC contributor Jim Pinkerton cited the Media Research Center, parent organization of NewsBusters, and passed on findings contained in the May 18 "Bozell Column," as he informed the panel that ABC, CBS and NBC had all ignored these embarrassing admissions by Obama administration cabinet members. Pinkerton:

And it was interesting, as Brent Bozell at the Media Research Center pointed out, not any of the big networks – ABC, CBS, or NBC – reported that Holder and Napolitano hadn't read it. And the major newspapers, the Post and Times, also didn't report it. By comparison, we could imagine what would have happened if a Democratic Congressman asked Alberto Gonzales, the former Attorney General under President Bush, if he hadn't read something. There would have been a typhoon of, "What a moron." And yet, stone silence from the mainstream media.

Panel member Rich Lowry of the National Review may also have picked up on a NewsBusters item when he recounted FNC veteran Brit Hume’s criticism of the inaccurate media coverage of the Arizona immigration law, and the mistake he admitted to making in initially believing the media misinformation. Lowry:

On Tuesday’s Joy Behar Show, HLN host Behar again suggested that an activity by the state of Arizona could be compared to Nazi Germany, as she discussed plans by the state’s education department to stiffen English-speaking requirements for teachers. Introducing the subject with comedians Mo Rocca and Colin Quinn, after taking a shot at former President Bush’s speaking skills, she asked does the requirement "remind you of any country, 1940ish?" Behar:

The Arizona Department of Education is cracking down on teachers with thick accents or who make grammatical errors when speaking. Well, there goes Snooki`s shot at teaching Algebra in Phoenix. Okay, and what about George Bush and his grammatical errors all those years? They are getting rid of teachers because they have accents in Arizona. Remind you of any country, 1940ish?

Over the past several weeks, during debates over Arizona’s attempt to enforce laws similar to federal immigration laws, Behar has repeatedly made direct and indirect references to Nazi Germany both on the Joy Behar Show and on ABC’s The View to disparage the Arizona law.

Below is a transcript of the relevant portion of the Tuesday, May 25, Joy Behar Show on HLN:

In an article published in Human Events on May 18, titled, "Our Founders' Solutions for Illegal Immigration, Part I," actor Chuck Norris cited the views of some of the Founding Fathers in calling for America's government to get control of illegal immigration. After quipping, "How is it that we can secure borders in the Middle East but can't secure our own?" he went on to recount that the Founders believed in the importance of "assimilating" new immigrants into the American culture, and quoted George Washington:

America's Founders also were concerned with properly assimilating immigrants so that their presence would be positive upon the culture. George Washington wrote, "By an intermixture with our people, they, or their descendants, get assimilated to our customs, measures, laws: in a word soon become one people."

Norris then relayed the views of Thomas Jefferson, whose political faction is known historically for being pro-immigration, and pointed out that even he saw the need for prudence in its management:

Since the passage of Arizona's new immigration law, Gov. Jan Brewer (R) has been fighting back against rhetorical attacks on her state. Her tenacity certainly isn't lost on Rush Limbaugh.

Make sure you check out The Right Scoop for move videos like this.

Appearing on the May 13 "Hannity" program for a "Media Mash" segment,  NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell tackled the media coverage of the Elena Kagan nomination. After the Fox News host played some clips of network anchors focusing on how the Obama Court nominee loves opera, softball, and poker, Bozell noted it was par for the course.

While "from the moment he was nominated, [Clarence Thomas] was savaged," whenever a liberal is nominated by a Democratic president, the media label him or her a moderate and focus on humanizing them, Media Research Center President Brent Bozell noted.

[MP3 audio available here]

Also of note, Bozell argued, was how the media have been largely quiet about a promotional video the White House produced to gin up positive PR for Kagan:

Republicans are likely to go with Tampa, Florida, as the venue for their 2012 presidential nominating convention in part because evangelicals hate Mormons. That's the gospel truth, at least according to Chris Matthews, who yesterday went on a loopy rant that was pure bluster and completely unsubstantiated in its assertions.

[MP3 audio available here; click play on the embedded video at right for video]

Matthews informed viewers that an RNC selection committee had submitted its recommendation of Tampa -- the RNC still has to give its formal approval -- over other finalists Phoenix, Arizona, and Salt Lake City, Utah. The "Hardball" host than gave his theory behind why the latter two cities were rejected, failing, of course, to cite any sources nor to add the caveat that this was purely his own speculation.

Here's the relevant transcript:

Ever since the passage of Arizona's new immigration law, the Left has been attacking anything associated with the state. MSNBC's Keith Olbermann continued the trend by going after Arizona's major league baseball team for what he claims is a lack of diversity.

But blogger and master video producer Broliath takes issue with Olbermann's claims in an excellent video embedded below:

New York Times sports columnist George Vecsey applauded the NBA's Phoenix Suns uniform protest of Arizona's strict new anti-immigration law in Saturday's "Walking Tentatively in Protester's Shoes," suggesting only that it didn't go far enough and even calling for Major League Baseball to boycott games in Arizona. The column also put in perspective the paper's long-time hypocrisy on athletes making political statements.

When the Phoenix Suns wore the name Los Suns on their jerseys Wednesday night, it was construed by many of their fans as a political statement against the new Arizona law regarding illegal immigrants.

....

As a political gesture, it fell far below the black gloves worn by two American sprinters in the 1968 Olympics. However, there definitely was a measure of criticism of the law from high up on the team -- including from the Suns' owner, Robert Sarver; the general manager, Steve Kerr; and players like Grant Hill, Amar'e Stoudemire and Steve Nash.

It was refreshing to hear reaction to current events from sports figures. It is easy to take pot shots at athletes and team officials for living in a bubble, isolated by money and fame. When athletes care about something, conservative or liberal, it is a sign they are alive.

Vecsey's stand is no surprise, coming from a newspaper that can't just let athletes play but tries to enlist them into pushing liberal social agendas. The Times ran an editorial on November 18, 2002, suggesting that Tiger Woods boycott The Masters golf tournament out of solidarity with women who aren't allowed to become members of Augusta National Golf Club, host of the tournament.

The New York Times maintained its usual labeling slant in its coverage of Arizona's new immigration law in Friday's story by Julia Preston, "Latino Groups Urge Boycott Of Arizona Over New Law."

Several large Latino and civil rights organizations on Thursday announced a business boycott of Arizona, saying that a tough anti-illegal immigration law there would lead to racial profiling and wrongful arrests.

The boycott call was led by the National Council of La Raza, or N.C.L.R., one of the nation's biggest Latino groups, and was joined by the League of United Latin American Citizens and the National Puerto Rican Coalition. The groups said they would ask members and supporters to refrain from planning conventions or conferences in Arizona and from buying goods produced in the state.

"The law is so extreme, and its proponents appear so immune to an appeal to reason, nothing short of these extraordinary measures is required," Janet Murguía, the president of N.C.L.R., said Thursday at a news conference in Washington.

Speaking of extreme: The unlabeled La Raza is a left-wing Hispanic activist group ("La Raza" stands for "the race,") leaving the group not much room to accuse others of making race-based appeals. And La Raza president Janet Murguia has a disturbingly authoritarian take on her political opponents.

Back in February 2008 she called for opinionators like Sean Hannity, Lou Dobbs and Glenn Beck to be removed from the airwaves because of their "hate speech" against illegal immigrants. (Revealingly, the Times's unquestioning story on the rant failed to place the inflammatory phrase "hate speech" in quotation marks, letting the smear stand as apparent fact.)

“Angry backlash from coast to coast,” ABC’s David Muir teased Saturday’s World News, “huge rallies across this country tonight against that new controversial immigration law.” On CBS, Jeff Glor teased: “May Day Message. Immigrant right groups rally from coast to coast against Arizona's controversial new law.”

ABC reporter Eric Horng touted how “this is the fifth year in a row that nationwide immigration rallies have been held on May 1st, but this year emotions are particularly raw. They came by the thousands. A sea of demonstrators armed with a message.” He soon claimed “the state has been lampooned by comedians” and as evidence played the very same clip from the left wing Jon Stewart as had NBC’s Andrea Mitchell earlier in the week when she asserted Arizona had become “a laughing stock.”

From Phoenix, CBS’s Bill Whitaker began with how “the many citizens here say that if the politicians don't hear their voices today they might hear them at the ballot box a little louder in November,” but moments later in his story Whitaker showcased an admitted illegal:

Gerardo, who asked us to conceal his identity, crossed illegally from Mexico to Arizona four years ago. With the new law he knows there's a greater chance he’ll be arrested and deported...He has a daughter, a state job, a home which his an American born partner Jessica is packing up, fearing they might have to flee...So they joined the protest in Phoenix, fighting to overturn the law. [video below, MP3 audio]

On Friday night, NBC promoted leftist May Day protests against Arizona’s new immigration enforcement law while CBS, after a full week of coverage focused on outrage against it, finally bothered to get around to how murder and crime got the public behind it. Declaring Arizona is “at the center of a growing storm over its tough new immigration law,” NBC anchor Brian Williams touted: “Activists across the country are planning a series of May Day protests tomorrow against the law.”

Reporter George Lewis announced: “Those May Day protests are expected to draw hundreds of thousands of people into the streets from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., to here in Arizona,” where Republican Governor Jan Brewer defends the measure even though, as if it’s relevant, Arnold Schwarzenegger, does not like it: “Last night on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger disagreed with Brewer.” Schwarzenegger: “I would never do that in California, passing laws like that. No way.”

Over on the CBS Evening News, Bill Whitaker acknowledged “recent polls show more than 60 percent of Arizonans support the state's tough new immigration law,” explaining, as if that’s surprising:

CBS won’t let go of liberal efforts against the new immigration enforcement law in Arizona. A night after Katie Couric focused on “the backlash against Arizona's new immigration law. San Francisco bans official travel to that state,” she teased Thursday’s CBS Evening News by trumpeting a lawsuit against it from a lone police officer: “The latest response to Arizona's new immigration law? Sue the state. We'll tell you who is.” She soon cited how “the first lawsuits were filed today challenging it, including one by a Tucson police officer who claims the law is unconstitutional.”

Reporter Bill Whitaker presumed Arizona has earned “notoriety,” instead of popularity for a law with majority support, as he began:

Six days after Arizona gained notice and notoriety with the toughest anti-immigration law in the country, protests are building, opposing sides are hardening, outside pressure is mounting. Today opponents turned on a little star power: Mexican-American singer Linda Ronstadt spoke out....She endorsed the first of what's likely to be a flurry of opposition lawsuits.

The law doesn’t take effect for several months, Whitaker noted, “but many citizens say it's having a chilling effect already. Listen as we talk to this immigrant rights worker.” Viewers then heard a male voice: “Why don't you go back to Mexico if it's so great, man?” Whitaker acknowledged some local governments “are pushing for Arizona-style immigration laws,” but countered with how “many more cities are lining up in opposition. Dozens are threatening to cut all business ties with Arizona.”

Timothy Egan, liberal New York Times reporter turned liberal nytimes.com columnist, is the latest former reporter to weigh in on Arizona's anti-immigration law, "Desert Derangement Syndrome."

It would be hard to top former NYT Supreme Court reporter Linda Greenhouse's hysterical conflation in her Tuesday print-edition column of Arizona's stricter enforcement of immigration laws with a Nazi police state, but Egan gets in his share of insults, some of them courtesy of comedian Jon Stewart, the "Mark Twain of our day."

But for all its diversity of land and people, Arizona is also a lunatic magnet. As I drove, I listened to the radio blather of a state in mob-rule frenzy of cranky old men. Once in Phoenix, I saw on television that sign in a car's rear window, the new image of Arizona to the rest of the world: "I'm Mexican. Pull me over."

A night after ABC and NBC championed the supposed “growing national backlash” against Arizona’s new anti-illegal alien law, the CBS Evening News caught up as anchor Katie Couric teased her Wednesday newscast by trumpeting a move by a far-left enclave: “The backlash against Arizona's new immigration law. San Francisco bans official travel to that state as pressure grows for a national immigration reform law.”

After Couric noted “a new travel warning today. This time it's Mexico warning its citizens to be careful if they visit Arizona,” reporter Nancy Cordes saw controversy “spreading to all corners of the country” as evidenced by how “San Francisco's Mayor just banned official travel to Arizona. City councils in Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles are considering similar measures.”

Cordes pivoted to Democratic maneuvers on immigration – “Today, a group of House Democrats called on Senate leaders to revive languishing immigration legislation” – but just like ABC and NBC the night before, she played more soundbites hostile to Arizona’s law than in favor of it. In her case, by 4-to1, including a “Nazi” comparison from U.S. Representative Jan Schakowsky: “The words ‘show me your papers,’ we've known from movies of World War II coming out of the mouth of a Nazi.”

[UPDATE BELOW: Tamron Hall responds on Twitter.] MSNBC's Tamron Hall on Wednesday worried that Arizona may be turning into the "most conservative state in the nation." A graphic on the liberal cable network chided, "Arizona Too Conservative?" [Audio available here.]

Hall talked to Zachary Roth from the Talking Points Memo web page. His site first sounded the alarm over the threat from this right wing state with an article entitled, "Crazy Arizona: How A State Went From Swinging In '08 To Out On A Limb In 2010."

After discussing several conservative initiatives that the state House has passed, Hall linked the tough new immigration law and other proposals to bigotry: "Here you have a state that could be one of the first with a dominant population of Latino and Hispanics. Is that, perhaps, why we're seeing this conservative push so appealing with people there?"

Extending the kind of respect they never provided the Tea Party activists, ABC and NBC on Tuesday night promoted what NBC anchor Brian Williams embraced as “the growing national backlash against the state of Arizona over its tough new immigration law that says police can stop people just on the suspicion they might be there illegally.”

ABC’s Barbara Pinto touted how “the call for an economic boycott here has caught fire on the Internet” while NBC’s Andrea Mitchell trumpeted how “anger over the law has gone viral,” as both pointed to how the American Immigration Lawyers Association had canceled a conference – of a mere 400 attendees -- scheduled for the state.

NBC’s Mitchell played clips from two left-wing comedians, as she asserted: “It's now gone beyond protest to threats of a boycott, as Arizona becomes a laughing stock to some.” Viewers then heard a joke from Saturday Night Live about “fascism” followed by The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart: “It's not unprecedented, having to carry around your papers. It's the same thing free black people had to do in 1863.” After showcasing a Facebook page (“Arizona, the Grand Canyon State, welcomes you unless you're a Mexican or look like one”), Mitchell cited “a slap in the face” from Mexico which, ironically, warned its citizens about traveling to Arizona.

Arizona officially joined the South this month. In other words, it became for our Northeastern media elitists a state dominated by backward, slack-jawed racists. The Associated Press marked the passage of a tough new anti-immigration law with the leftist version of a Welcome Wagon: “The furor over Arizona's new law cracking down on illegal immigrants grew Monday as opponents used refried beans to smear swastikas on the state Capitol.”

Disagreeing with the left – and more importantly, handing them a political defeat – brings a lot of ugliness these days from the forces of “tolerance.” Character assassination is required. A citizen of Arizona cannot be concerned about higher rates of crime and strained government budgets without being Mexican-food-smeared as an adorer of Adolf Hitler.

But what’s truly outrageous if not surprising is that the same media that visibly quivered with anger that anyone would draw a Hitler moustache on their hero Barack Obama now present these Nazi smears as not an embarrassment to the left, but as a way of augmenting the left. The “furor was growing” over the tough new law, they dutifully report.

Linda Greenhouse, the New York Times's former Supreme Court reporter, now writes a twice-monthly column for nytimes.com. But the paper's editors must have found her latest rant on Arizona's tough new immigration law particularly powerful, because it made it into Tuesday's print edition: "Breathing While Undocumented."

Greenhouse, who caused controversy while still a Times reporter when she made her hard-left views on abortion and Guantanamo Bay public at a Harvard commencement address in the summer of 2006, really let it out on Tuesday, with visions of police states and a seemingly inevitable comparison to Nazism.

I'm glad I've already seen the Grand Canyon.

Because I'm not going back to Arizona as long as it remains a police state, which is what the appalling anti-immigrant bill that Gov. Jan Brewer signed into law last week has turned it into.

For the second consecutive weeknight, the CBS Evening News on Monday framed Arizona’s new anti-illegal immigrant bill around the fears and charges of its supposed victims. With “ANGER & ANXIETY” on screen below video of signs hostile to the new law (“LAND OF THE FREE! REALLY?” and a Swastika sign with “Achtung! Papers Please”), Katie Couric teased: “Anger in Arizona against a new law allowing police to make you prove you’re in the country legally” – followed by a man who impugned supporters: “They’re just focusing on us because we’re brown.”

Couric soon set up CBS’s story by relaying how “opponents say it will lead to racial profiling” as she didn’t pass judgment on their vandalism when she reported “some of those opponents vandalized the state capitol building, smearing refried beans in the shape of swastikas on the windows.” (Talk about fulfilling a stereotype)

John Blackstone presented arguments in favor of the law, but delivered his story through the eyes of sympathetic, if misinformed, people who see themselves as victims. “Kym Rivera brought her children to a demonstration today against Arizona's new immigration law. Her husband, born in El Salvador was sworn in as a citizen last October,” but “she fears he'll become a suspect when police are searching for illegal immigrants under the new law.” She baselessly asserted: “He worries he'll be asked to leave this country because he was not born here. That he'll be separated from his children, from his wife of 15 years.”

Blackstoned moved on to “19-year-old Junior Perez,” the same guy in the opening tease, who “has heard the assurances that the law is aimed only at illegal immigrants. He's not convinced,” and, corroborating his fear, Blackstone insisted that “in a state where more than 30 percent of the population is Hispanic, many feel the sting of racism in the new law.” Perez charged: “They’re just focusing on us because we're brown. So, it's just devastating.”

The New York Times sometimes takes its politically correct blandishments to humorous extremes, as in Randal Archibold's lead story Saturday, “Arizona Enacts Stringent Law On Immigration.” Check the curious way Archibold referred to a protest against Arizona's new anti-immigration law, then try to imagine how the paper would react if such things had happened at a Tea Party rally:

As hundreds of demonstrators massed, mostly peacefully, at the capitol plaza, the governor, speaking at a state building a few miles away, said the law “represents another tool for our state to use as we work to solve a crisis we did not create and the federal government has refused to fix.”

Achibold didn't go into why he felt obliged to include the modifier “mostly.” For that, one had to check out a local report filed Friday night that included details the Times left out:

Three people were arrested during the immigration rally at the state capitol Friday afternoon.

Two were arrested after they were seen throwing water bottles at police, according to a news release from the Arizona Department of Public Safety, the state police agency.

Evidently, “mostly peacefully” means “somewhat violently” at the New York Times.

This local news clip is even more dramatic, showing a police officer being nailed with a water bottle, one of many hurled in the semi-chaotic "march" that the headline terms a "small riot."

Arizona’s new law hardly earned a friendly reception Friday night from any of the network newscasts, but CBS went the furthest in presenting it from the perspective of its “victims” as anchor Katie Couric, over video of “Veto Racism” and “Stop the Hate” signs, teased: “Tonight, Arizona's controversial new immigration law. Police will now be able to make anyone they choose prove they're here illegally. It triggers demonstrations by both sides and a warning from President Obama.” (Presumably, she meant “prove they’re here legally.”)

Reporter Bill Whitaker suddenly found wisdom in the Catholic Church, plastering “mean-spirited” on screen:

In Los Angeles, Cardinal Roger Mahony, head of the country's largest Catholic archdiocese, called the law “mean-spirited” and compared it to Nazi repression. Today at a ceremony for new citizens, President Obama criticized Arizona's actions.

On ABC, Diane Sawyer teased: “Tonight on World News, Crackdown. Arizona targets illegal immigrants. The toughest new law in the country. Protesters hit the streets.”

New York Times reporter Jennifer Steinhauer, previously heard insulting California voters for failing to vote for tax hikes, ventured over the border on Tuesday's front page to cover a Republican primary scuffle in Arizona involving Sen. John McCain being challenged from the right by former congressman J.D. Hayworth: “McCain, Facing G.O.P. Foe in Primary, Tilts to the Right.” The online headline: “From Right of Radio Dial, a Challenge to McCain.”

Hayworth was part of the Republican class of 1994, who served six terms in the House until losing in 2006. Steinhauer described Hayworth's defeat in loaded terms: “His loss to Harry E. Mitchell, a Democrat, in his 2006 re-election bid was humiliating, and underscored voter distaste for some of his more boisterous ways.”

From the start, Steinhauer hit the liberal cliches about conservative radio hosts.

J. D. Hayworth is a large man, and to compensate for his indulgences, he hits the elliptical trainer every morning at 4, zipping along to an incongruous soundtrack of Elvis Costello, Frank Sinatra and old advertising jingles.

Until recently, he would then repair to a local radio station, where he would spend the better part of the day denouncing, in no particular order, illegal immigrants, all things Barack Obama, those who are insufficiently patriotic and, his favorite mark, one John McCain, the senior senator from Arizona.

Steinhauer feels for McCain, who in her telling is being pushed “starkly” to the right by “far right” meanies like Hayworth, in a piece notable for its sudden sympathy toward John McCain, whose coverage in the Times seems to be determined based on whether a loss by him would help or hurt the conservative movement. As Times Watch has demonstrated, McCain was clearly the Times's favorite Republican in Campaign 2008 – until he became the clear frontrunner and the only likely candidate standing between a historic Democratic presidency involving either the first female or first black president.

An eight-year-old girl, gang-raped by four young boys in Phoenix, then blamed for the rape by her family and shunned: how quickly and heavily will the media respond? Where is President Obama, who can comment on local police matters in Cambridge, Massachusetts? So far, Nexis shows CNN is the first and only network on this story, which should captivate Nancy Grace and Greta van Susteren for weeks, not to mention network morning shows. Here’s a summary from AP:

Authorities said Thursday that four boys ages 9 to 14 took turns raping an 8-year-old girl behind a shed for more than 10 minutes in what Phoenix police are calling one of the most horrific cases they've ever seen.

The outrage over the allegations intensified after police said the girl's parents criticized her after the attack and blamed her for bringing shame on the family.

"The father told the caseworker and an officer in her presence that he didn't want her back. He said, 'Take her, I don't want her,' " police Sgt. Andy Hill said.

...Phoenix investigators said the boys lured the girl to an empty shed July 16 under the pretense of offering her gum. The boys held the girl down while they took turns assaulting her, police said.

The Associated Press's Stylebook (as of 2008, per this Houston Chronicle blog entry) has the following to say about political party identification in stories:

Party Affiliation - Let relevance be the guide in determining whether to include a political figure's party affiliation in a story. Party affiliation is pointless in some stories, such as an account of a governor accepting a button from a poster child.

It will occur naturally in many political stories. For stories between these extremes, include party affiliation if readers need it for understanding or are likely to be curious about what it is.

The AP, as readers here know, frequently flouts its own standards when Democrats are involved in legal or personal difficulties in its reporters' original write-ups. That's bad enough. But what's doubly offensive, and sadly no longer surprising, is how its writers seem to actively work to purge party references from other publications' original local or single-state stories about Democratic politicians or officials involved in scandal or other troubles.

In the latest example, it isn't just that the subject's party isn't directly identified. Based on AP's "clever" composition, many readers are likely to conclude that the person in trouble is a Republican.

It's not often during midday cable news broadcasting you get to see raw emotion from one or two of the hosts. However, when President Barack Obama gets snubbed, there are exceptions to the rule.

On MSNBC on April 10, co-hosts Contessa Brewer and Carlos Watson put their disapproval on display for viewers to see while reporting a decision by Arizona State University not to award Obama an honorary degree for speaking at the school's commencement next month.

"In other news, President Obama will be giving the commencement address at Arizona State University on May 13th. But the president will not be getting an honorary degree according to the school. Here's why, quote, ‘While President Obama has already achieved remarkable success including becoming the first African-American president, his greatest work is yet to come. We will be delighted to consider him for an honorary degree once he leaves office at the end of the presidency.'"

Robert Burns and Robert H. Reid created quite a stir in the blogosphere yesterday with their dispatch from Baghdad, "Analysis: US now winning Iraq war that seemed lost." NewsBusters colleague Noel Sheppard accurately called it a "stop the presses" story, and ended his post with an important perspective that you really must read if you haven't already.

Now that the story has had one overnight news cycle since its appearance at about 9 AM yesterday, I looked around to see how much coverage Burns's and Reid's work received.

I looked at what the three "newspapers of record" did (if anything) with the AP item; searched Google News for other coverage; and reviewed headline revisions made by outlets that carried it.

Results are below the fold.