As if the relationship between the Obama Administration and the news media weren't cozy enough already, former "CBS Evening News" anchor Dan Rather is calling on President Obama to "make recommendations" for the media on how to survive the economic downturn. 

Rather spoke at the Aspen Institute in Aspen, Colo. on July 28 and addressed challenges to the news industry, which he described as challenges to the "very survival of American democracy," and insisted the president should step in.

"I personally encourage the president to establish a White House commission on public media," Rather said, according to the July 29 Aspen Daily News.

Former professor Ward Churchill, who infamously likened some 9-11 victims to Nazis in an essay written on September 12, 2001, won a civil trial on a technicality yesterday, winning $1 in damages for having been unjustly dismissed from his teaching position at the University of Colorado.

In a Friday New York Times story from Denver, Kirk Johnson and Katharine Seelye team up to cover the trial of Churchill, who was fired for plagiarism in his scholarly work as a consequence of scrutiny after public attention was focused on his essay calling the "technocratic corps" murdered in the World Trade Center "little Eichmanns" who had it coming.

The verdict by the panel of four women and two men -- none of whom wished to be interviewed by reporters, court officials said -- seemed unlikely to resolve the larger debate surrounding Mr. Churchill that was engendered by the case. Is Mr. Churchill, as his supporters contend, a torchbearer for the right to hold unpopular political views? Or is he unpatriotic or -- as his harshest critics contend -- an outright collaborator with the nation's enemies at a time of war?

The jury seemed at least partly undecided on what to think about the man at the center of the fight, whose essay made him a polarizing national figure.

The Times is far too kind. We can safely assume that someone who applauds the death of American citizens for the crime of being American citizens is by definition "unpatriotic." Churchill's statements were only "polarizing" in the sense that he and a few fellow left-wing extremists believed them, while the rest of the country was suitably disgusted.

Here’s a story that probably won’t make the national news: Colorado’s "zero tolerance" law on guns traps an honors student in its extremes. From Saturday’s Washington Times, Valerie Richardson reports:

A Colorado high school student expelled for having fake drill-team rifles in her car was cleared Friday to return to school.

The school board limited the expulsion of Marie Morrow, 17, to time served for bringing the duct-taped "rifles" made of wood and plastic to Cherokee Trail High School in the back of her car. She was expelled immediately on Feb. 5, pending a school board decision.

Colorado's "zero tolerance" law mandates that students who bring weapons - even facsimiles - to school, must be expelled for a period ranging from one day to one year. Marie's case has led some state lawmakers to consider legislation that would add flexibility to the law.

Marie, an honors student and member of the Douglas County Young Marines, said Friday she was looking forward to returning to class.

"I'm just ready to go back, just glad to get back to school," she told KUSA-TV, the local NBC-TV affiliate.

As the city of Denver prepares for this week's Democratic convention, numerous Hollywood celebs are planning to attend in support of Barack Obama and to advocate for pet issues. Gushes Variety,

When Barack Obama accepts the nomination before some 75,000 people at a Denver stadium on Thursday, he'll be surrounded by a contingent of average Americans from all walks of life --- just not Hollywood performers, musicians and other famous figures who have so publicly championed his candidacy.

So what, exactly, will be the role of celebrity during the week of the Democratic National Convention?

Riots in the street or no, Denver might be the place to be this August, if only for August Ritter's sweet Convention after-parties.

DenverPost.com has an article, complete with photos, delving into Gov. Bill Ritter's (D) son reveling with friends at a December 2007 boozefest in the Governor's Mansion. The only rules of said party, the Post noted citing an invitation, were "no throwing up" and "no sexy time."

The one thing lacking from reporter Karen Crummy's story: Gov. Ritter's political affiliation.

The party label is arguably germane to the story. After all Ritter spokesman Evan Dreyer defended August Ritter's revelry, which suggests Ritter has a cavalier attitude about his son's disregard of and disrespect for the taxpayer-owned mansion.:

Families USA is at it again and as usual the liberal media are dutifully parroting their rhetoric.

The liberal, pro-universal healthcare advocacy group recently released a report attacking President Bush’s budget proposal for Medicaid. In the report, Families USA Director Ron Pollack asserted that Bush’s proposed budget decreases funding for Medicaid. Like last time, Families USA has released state-specific studies showing that Bush’s supposed Medicaid cuts would cause the individual state to lose so many jobs and so much money. Local newspapers took the bait.

There’s just one problem: President Bush’s 2009 budget proposal does not cut funding for Medicaid. In fact it calls for an increase in Medicaid spending by $12 to $13 million as compared to the expected spending for 2008. The decrease in the president’s budget proposal is not really a decrease at all. What the president is proposing amounts to a slightly smaller annual average growth rate for Medicaid spending (7.1 percent) than the projected annual average growth rate of 7.4 percent over the next five years. (More information here).

The mainstream media seems all too willing to let left-wing labor groups affiliated with the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center (BISC) get away with dressing up their blatant efforts to thwart the will of the people. Let every vote be counted and everyone’s opinion be heard, say the left, unless their favorite government-enforced labor union privileges are under attack. Then, all bets are off. *(It has come to our attention via fax, that BISC was issued a cease in desist letter on March 27, for their unauthorized use of Kessler International trademark for the use of "Fraudbusters." )

Take the case of the Denver Post’s April 9 report on a legal challenge brought by the Colorado AFL-CIO alleging ballot fraud and unreported financial dealings on the part of the organizers of a state right-to-work ballot initiative. Incredibly, Mike Cerbo, executive director for the Colorado AFL-CIO defends the suit to the Rocky Mountain News by asking "We want to know who we are dealing with… [a]nd where are they getting their money? ... That's why we have campaign finance laws." And the suit comes right on the heels of the right-to-work group’s recent announcement it has gathered nearly double the signatures necessary to get its petition on the November ballot. But what the Denver media are missing in their reporting of the controversy is that the AFL-CIO and labor ally United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCWU) are part of an ongoing state by state effort to thwart popular conservative and libertarian ballot initiatives by any means necessary.

The Denver Post gave us a fine example -- not that they meant to -- of why every year our schools are turning out more semi-literate kids with over inflated egos. To the Post, of course, it's all good news that being poor in the Denver School Districts now qualifies a kid to be placed in the "gifted students" programs. To the Post this new classification "makes things more equitable" in those gifted programs. Why, it's giving minorities a "lift," you see? Of course, there isn't a word out of anyone in Denver if whether or not any of these kids suddenly classified as "gifted" students actually have any gifts that might prove them worthy of their politically motivated status.

In the typically empty fashion so popular among our ideologically left infested school administrations the country over, it's merely a matter of quotas and economic stats by which we measure success, not any true educational achievement. If your program for gifted students doesn't have enough of the right race of children (or the minority du jour) why then it must be obvious that the program is a failure. So, instead of improving the overall education for all students in order to bring minority students up to snuff so as to qualify them for entrance into a gifted program, the Denver Schools are just going to "add points" to the tests for kids merely because they are "poor," or if "English is their second language."

Voila, more "gifted" kids abound in Denver.

Planned Parenthood is at it again -- lying about its construction plans. Catholic News Agency reports the Catholic bishops of Colorado (Denver, Pueblo, and Colorado Springs) are calling out the abortion industry giant's tactics:

The bishops write, “In early November, Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains (PPRM) broke ground on a new headquarters and clinic in northeast Denver.” They “purchased this property secretly under the guise of Fuller 38 LLC.”

“Planned Parenthood told the Denver Post that PPRM planned to complete the entire project in secrecy to avoid protests and delays that other Planned Parenthood buildings have encountered around the country.”

Do student journalists understand the difference between free speech and common sense? If they are at Colorado State University, the answer appears to be a resounding no. According to the Associated Press, the editorial staff of the student-run Colorado State University newspaper The Rocky Mountain Collegian published an editorial which in its entirety read'Taser This... F*** Bush'. Then the student staff claimed that it was all about free speech,

Collegian Editor David McSwane said a group of seven student editors discussed the statement for several hours before agreeing to publish it. "We felt it illustrated our point about freedom of speech," McSwane told 7NEWS. "I think we could write 250 words and ramble on and I don't think anyone would pay attention."

So what exactly was their point?

Never's a long time, but, "Never Enough" seems appropriate for the state Democrats and their enablers over at the Denver Post. This morning, the paper's Local & Western Politics Blog runs an uncritical story about the desire of state Democrats to raise taxes again under the title, "Seventeen tax proposals under discussion in Colorado." The two liberal groups quoted, the Bell Policy Center and the Colorado Fiscal Policy Institute, are not identified as such. Members of Bell campagned with Ref C supporters a couple of years ago. And the CFPI's parent institute, the Colorado Center on Law and Policy, describes its mission as: "The Colorado Center on Law and Policy's mission is to promote justice and economic security for all Coloradans, particularly lower income people.

Colorado journalists and politicians who fell in line and attempted the bogus "Food Stamp Challenge" probably didn't anticipate that a Colorado blogger would call them out, and then call their bluff. But that is exactly what happened.

In June, Colorado Freedom Report's Ari Armstrong challenged those in that state's media and political class who swallowed the claim that Food Stamp recipients can't get by on $21 per person per week (even though, as syndicated columnist Mona Charen and yours truly noted back in April, the right number is between about $27 and $36, depending on family size) to pay $10 to a charity of Mr. Armstrong's choice for every dollar under $1,080 ($6 a day for 180 days) that he and his wife combined spent on food in a six-month period.

(Picky, picky -- The Armstrongs were even tougher on themselves than they needed to be, as there are 184 days in the six-month August 2006 - January 2007 time period involved. They could have used $1,104 as their benchmark.)

Nonetheless, Armstrong had only two people take up his challenge:

The media was fascinated with the story of the Americans in Michael Moore's "Sicko," who left the US for medical treatment in Cuba, a country with socialized medicine, and it was used to highlight the failings of the US health care system. When the exact opposite occurred, and an American fled Italy's socialized medicine for medical treatment in the privatized care of the US, the media decded that angle was no longer significant. 

In the coverage of Andrew Speaker’s TB quarantine, very little was mentioned about why he was so determined to return to the US that he ignored the CDC’s command to remain in Italy to treat his life-threatening illness, which is the most serious form of TB and is resistant to most drugs.

Speaker was so adamant about getting out of Italy and returning to the US health care system because Italy's was inadequate for his needs. The AP recounted the Diane Sawyer interview on ABC where Andrew Speaker said the doctors at a Denver research hospital said the US was his only hope (emphasis mine throughout):

"Before I left, I knew that it was made clear to me, that in order to fight this, I had one shot, and tha was going to be in Denver," he said. If doctors in Europe tried to treat him and it went wrong, he said, "it's very real that I could have died there."

If you believe the hype from the open-borders crowd about how illegal immigrants "are doing jobs other won't do," you would have to wonder how this ever happened (the following is from a May 11 company press release):

Swift & Company Announces Return of Standard Staffing Levels at All Four Domestic Beef Processing Facilities

Pork Processing Facilities Resumed Normal Production in March

Swift & Company today reported its return to standard staffing levels at all four domestic beef processing facilities after the detention and removal, on December 12, 2006, of approximately 950 Swift Beef employees by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement ("ICE") division.

The December 2006 ICE event also involved two Swift Pork processing facilities. As the Company announced on April 10, 2007, Swift's domestic pork operations returned to normal levels in March 2007. ICE detained and removed a total of nearly 1,300 Swift Beef and Swift Pork employees during the December 2006 event.

A terse Associated Press story on the announcement that gained very little circulation made sure to remind us that "Operations at Swift plants in Colorado, Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, Texas and Hyrum, Utah, were suspended for several hours on Dec. 12 while immigration agents arrested 1,217 workers. No company managers have been charged."

Somehow, AP "forgot" to tell us that, as reported by the Greeley, Colorado Tribune the previous week (requires free registration), that at just one of the facilities involved:

Ever since Independence Institute researcher and fellow RMA blogger Ben DeGrow discovered that Colorado is 26th in education funding, not 49th, the local media has been, well, less than enthusastic. The Denver Post hasn't reported his findings at all. The Rocky did run an oped piece by Mike Rosen, which included this amusing bit:

Forty-ninth just sounds more dramatic. Union activists in at least nine other states - Arizona, Louisiana, Nevada, Florida, Pennsylvania, Idaho, Tennessee, Illinois and Utah - apparently agree. By one survey or another, all claimed to be 49th in 2004 or 2005.

The typical response is that [insert state name here] is thankful for Mississippi. But wait:

But Franks and others argued that the Legislature had to set priorities, and education should be the No. 1 priority. "Is it practical for us to be 49th in education funding?" Franks asked.

The 49th disease is even spreading across the 49th Parallel:

There is not as much money per pupil as before. This occurs at a time when Ontario's funding for education stands 49th in North America.

Gee, with 50 states and 11 provinces, not counting Mexico, you'd at least think they'd have been imaginative enough to make it 60 out of 61. Welcome to the Education Establishment, and the Media Echo Chamber. Where all the unions are strong, the statistics are good-looking, and all the funding is below-average.