District of Columbia

Despite a claim by Washington Post Ombudsman Andrew Alexander, that "accusations of journalistic overkill" in the newspaper's recent coverage of same-sex marriage are "off-base," the Post itself keeps piling up evidence of its pro-gay agenda.

The Culture and Media Institute found that between March 3, the day after same-sex couples could being applying for marriage licenses in the District of Columbia, through March 10, one week later, the Post devoted nearly 543 inches of column space (almost four full pages) to the new law and what it meant for local gay couples. Supporters of the changed policy were quoted 10 times more than opponents.

Alexander spoke with CMI last week about its review of the Post's coverage, but between March 18 and March 25, the newspaper devoted another 191 inches of column space to gay rights. Thirty-four different pro-gay quotes appeared in four stories, one of which was written by a bisexual, while the opposing view did not appear at all.

Last May, The Washington Post highlighted Patricia McGuire, the president of Trinity Washington University, for a speech lashing out at the "snarl of hatred" of pro-life protesters of President Obama’s commencement speech at Notre Dame. McGuire is the cover girl of Sunday’s Washington Post Magazine, and her vicious liberal speech is a mere footnote in a puff piece by education reporter Daniel de Vise.

The cover said "The soul of Trinity: For two decades, Pat McGuire has been consumed by turning a Catholic college into a model for urban higher ed." [Italics theirs.] As is typical in the Post, McGuire is a raging liberal, but the reporter never uses the L word. They simply suggest that at some point, she found the "right" side of history:

Even though his cable TV news network may not have that many viewers in relative terms to his competitors, MSNBC's David Shuster apparently has some clout when it comes to getting things done in Washington, D.C. - at least on a municipal level.

Shuster, making effort to give his viewers some "perspective" of his personal experience with the reason record-breaking snowfall in Washington, D.C., showed pictures of scenes near his Washington, D.C. home - complete with unplowed snow and a downed tree on MSNBC Feb. 12.

"And to give you some perspective on what it's been like for all of us here in Washington, D.C., on residential streets that don't get plowed," Shuster said. "First up, this is a picture my wife took on Sunday in front of our house looking north of 32nd Street," Shuster explained. "This was after the first storm that dumped about 23 inches and before the second drop of another 12. And here's a photo from the same angle last night, the weight of the second storm caused one of the trees to fall down yesterday morning breaking windows in that apartment building on the right. We have street parking and here's what 35 inches of unplowed snow does to cars."

Video Embedded Below Fold

Maybe there's a reason why the media have either denigrated or completely ignored the Sept. 12 march in Washington, D.C. - they were highly critical of their job performance as well.

Aside from protesters taking on CNN reporter Lisa Desjardins, as NewsBusters Matt Sheffield pointed out, there were also other pockets of backlash against media evident at the march, which were captured on video (pardon my shoddy camera work).

The march that preceded the rally in front of the U.S. Capitol took place on Pennsylvania Avenue, from Freedom Plaza to the West Lawn of the Capitol went directly in front of the Newseum, a building erected that supposedly honors those deemed the most important practitioners of the First Amendment - the news media. Marchers chanted, "Shame on the press," as they passed the colossal 250,000-square-foot building dedicated to the press situated between the White House and the U.S. Capitol on Pennsylvania Avenue. (0:17)

No matter how much money any government - federal, state or local - puts into public education, it's never enough in some people's eyes.

A July 1 "NBC Nightly News" segment detailed a new use of tax payer dollars in one of the worst performing, financially struggling school systems in the country - the Washington, D.C. public school system. They are paying school children with taxpayer funds, part of a social experiment to improve school participation at the middle school level.

"Keeping the exuberant sixth graders of Shaw Middle School at Garnet-Patterson in line on a sunny Friday is a challenge for principal Brian Betts," former "Nightly News" anchor-turned-correspondent Tom Brokaw explained. "But this is not an assembly, it's payday. It's called Capital Gains - paying students for good grades, behavior and attendance, part of the massive restructuring of the D.C. schools by a 38-year-old Korean-American woman, who as chancellor, wants to transform what is by many measures the worst-performing public school system in the U.S."

Last Friday, MSNBC's Contessa Brewer expressed her shock and disbelief that Arizona State University would not award President Barack Obama an honorary degree since he was their commencement speaker.

However, over the weekend, the University announced it would instead name "their most important scholarship" after Obama - instead of awarding the president an honorary degree.

"Here's the statement from ASU President Michael Crow: ‘We never felt an honorary degree was the only or event the best means of honoring his tremendous service to our country,'" Brewer said. "‘Naming the scholarship program after President Obama that will affect the lives of thousands of students is an honor befitting, not only the president's exceptional achievements, but also his value as an individual.'"

That didn't impress Brewer, responding on MSNBC in a segment on April 13. "Whoop-dee-do! That's my reaction," Brewer said

You could almost hear "How dare he!" being uttered by the left-wing establishment when Politico reported April 9 that a Republican congressman identified a specific number of "socialists" in the U.S. House of Representatives.

In a speech he gave at his home district, Rep. Spencer Bachus, R-Ala., the ranking Republican, Rep. Barney Frank's (D-Mass.) counterpart, on the House Banking Committee, said there were 17 socialists among him and his colleagues in the House.

Some in the media were also disturbed by Bachus' remarks and expressed dismay on MSNBC April 10. Emily Heil, a frequent guest on MSNBC and "Heard on the Hill" columnist for Roll Call, expressed her shock that Bachus would use "socialist" for a description of some members of Congress. MSNBC's Peter Alexander asked Heil what sort of backlash Bachus might face.

"Sure, well I think people are going to be pressing him on this and I think it was really a surprising thing to say - to say something that sort of inflammatory with that level of specificity, with providing an actual number," Heil said.

Everywhere it's been tried - liberal, or progressive as it's sometimes described as, talk radio hasn't taken off with the success conservative talk radio has.

Case and point - the top six of March 2009 Talkers magazine "Heavy Hundred" talk show hosts are conservative.  The top liberal host, Thom Hartmann, come in at number 10. However, liberal talk show host Stephanie Miller appeared on CNN's April 5 "Reliable Sources" and insisted there is more at play than just pure market forces holding the liberal format back.

"Well, you know - I just did a panel on the Fairness Doctrine," Miller said. "I have to tell you, I brought ratings information. And people like me and Ed Schultz are consistently beating conservative shows in many, many markets. And yet - there is 10 percent liberal radio in this country. Ninety percent of the stations are conservative. You just cannot argue anymore it's because liberal radio can't compete."

Remember all those TV segments and magazine articles that had a list of 10 things you can do to save the planet from the perils of global warming? More likely than not, one of things you were urged to do was to switch all you incandescent light bulbs to compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs).

And, if you didn't heed their advice, the government's forcing you to through the legislative process. Congress banned the incandescent light bulbs in the energy bill signed into law by former President George W. Bush on Dec. 19, 2007. The bill increases efficiency standards and effectively bans traditional bulbs by 2014.

However, a segment by Washington, D.C. CBS affiliated WUSA on March 30 reported these CFLs were responsible for a fire at the home of Rick Jenkins, a resident of Cumberland, Md.

We're nearly 24 hours out of Earth Hour and the media are already proclaiming it a success as Michael Bates pointed out for NewsBusters in a blog post earlier today.

However one prominent global warming alarmist reportedly didn't fully participate in the Earth Hour festivities. According to Drew Johnson, president of the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, global warming activist and former Vice President Al Gore left his lights for the hyped Earth Hour.

"I pulled up to Al's house, located in the posh Belle Meade section of Nashville, at 8:48pm - right in the middle of Earth Hour," Johnson wrote and reprinted on the Washington Examiner's blog on March 29. "I found that the main spotlights that usually illuminate his 9,000 square foot mansion were dark, but several of the lights inside the house were on."

The Seattle Times compiles what it calls "The Favor Factory," which it calls "A database of lawmakers, earmarks, and campaign giving."

One noteworthy congressman in the Favor Factory is Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA; picture at right is currently at his home page).

Moran's Favors Factory page for 2008 lists 29 earmarks totaling $40.6 million, and over $890,000 in capaign contributions from earmark recipients.

Recall that Nancy Pelosi promised "Fiscal Restraint If Democrats Win" in a July 2006 Wall street Journal interview about the congressional elections that would be taking place four months later (link is to cato.org, which excerpted the now unavailable WSJ report). She also told the Journal:

“Personally, myself, I’d get rid of all of them,” she said. “None of them is worth the skepticism, the cynicism the public has… and the fiscal irresponsibility of it.”

Rep. Moran begged to differ just one month earlier, using language he would hopefully avoid around the second-graders with whom he is pictured above (actual offensive four-letter word is at link), as reported by a local metro DC community newspaper, the Sun Gazette:

Which would be the safer place to be for a political figure who's received death threats?:

a. A school concert in a public venue.
b. A press conference in the company of the President-elect of the United States of America.

If you answered 'b,' you're thinking like me and presumably most people. If you answered 'a,' you're A.B. Stoddard.  The associate editor of "The Hill" offered up the strange excuse that death threats are preventing Rahm Emanuel from attending press conferences in the course of an MSNBC appearance this afternoon during which she also claimed that "President-elect Obama is taking steps to be as forthcoming and as open and as transparent as he promised he would be."   

View video here.

Washington, D.C., local JoEllen Murphy has received a steady stream of media exposure for her Biblical message to counter the controversial "Why believe in a god?" ads seen on metro-area busses.

On Monday, December 15, D.C.-area Metro busses will sport a pro-God advertisement that is a direct response to a $40,000 atheistic ad campaign sponsored by the American Humanist Association. Those ads read, "Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness' sake."

For the rest of the article, go to the Culture and Media Institute.

A Fairfax County registrar's attempts to disenfranchise soldiers voting by absentee ballot is one step closer to being reversed thanks to a legal opinion issued yesterday by Virginia Attorney General Robert McDonnell (R). Although the Old Dominion is a hard-fought battleground state in the 2008 presidential election and John Kerry-backing Fairfax County should be a true-blue source of Obama votes, the story was given just five brief paragraphs on the page four "Virginia Briefing" feature of the October 28 paper's Metro section.

The fact that the registrar, Rokey W. Suleman II, is a partisan Democrat who has worked hard to register inmates at the county jail was unreported in both Christian Davenport's Oct. 28 brief and his full October 27 online article. In fact, Suleman's name itself was missing from the print edition squib.

Washington Examiner staffer William C. Flook reported on October 8 about Suleman's efforts to register jail inmates to vote. While not illegal, his push to register misdemeanor convicts stands in stark contrast to his hair-splitting read of Virginia state law to toss out military absentee ballots for lack of a witness's address (emphases mine):

Democrats love their celebrities, and academia, well, they'll settle for celebrities' fathers. Cinncinatti.com's John Kiesewetter reports that Nick Clooney, George's dad, will be the "distinguished journalist in residence" at the American University in Washington D.C.

If George Clooney's dad, Nick Clooney, can be a professor of journalism, maybe I gave George's foreign policy chops short shrift. 

Jeff Dufour and Patrick Gavin, in the Tuesday edition of the Washington Examiner’s "Yeas & Nays" feature, reported that Helen Thomas gave a vehement denial of whether the media, and the White House press corps in particular, has a liberal bent. "Yeas & Nays got a sneak peak at Rory Kennedy’s new HBO documentary -- ‘Thank You, Mr. President: Helen Thomas at The White House’ -- which premieres next month, and Thomas is asked whether most White House reporters are liberal. ‘Hell no!’ she responds. ‘I’m dying to find another liberal open their mouths. Where are they!’ This is the second day in a row that Dufour and Gavin have reported on interesting quotations from members of the mainstream media.

During the documentary, Thomas went on to accuse the press of treating Former President Bill Clinton oppressively, especially during his second term. "[Thomas] exhibited great empathy for what President Clinton went through during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. ‘I don’t know how he could have taken what he took,’ said Thomas. ‘For reporters, it was a story you couldn’t avoid as much as you’d like to,’ but ‘no president has been subjected to that type of tyranny.’"

The Washington Examiner’s Jeff Dufour and Patrick Gavin reported Monday in their regular "Yeas & Nays" feature that Katie Couric had announced with pride, "I am a feminist." The ultra-liberal National Organization for Women honored Couric at their annual Intrepid Awards Gala last week in Washington, DC, and the CBS Evening News anchor received a warm welcome from her feminist compatriots.

During her speech before the NOW Gang, Couric "opened up," as Dufour and Gavin put it. She quipped to her hosts that "[i]f everyone in the country was like you, CBS News would be number one." Yes, perhaps if everyone were liberal feminist Democrats, then maybe Couric’s program wouldn’t be dead last in the ratings.

Now, this isn’t exactly a surprising "full disclosure" by Couric. When she was still on the Today Show in 1997, guest Whoopi Goldberg outed Couric’s "pro-choice" position on abortion when the comedienne revealed the two had attended a "pro-choice" march together. In October 2006, after the father of a victim of the Columbine shootings declared his pro-life position in a "freeSpeech" segment on CBS Evening News, Couric wrote on her blog that his view might be seen as "repugnant."

Nearly two years ago on Newsbusters, I floated a proposal that newspapers require their editorial and other writers to police themselves for accuracy by requiring them to turn in footnotes with their copy. The process would force writers to check information they think they know that isn't so.

Had editors at the Washington Post, Hartford Courant, Sacramento Bee and Raleigh News & Observer taken my advice, they could have prevented a howler of an error from appearing on their opinion pages this week, in which a writer and fact-checking editors at all four papers apparently forgot the existence of the 27th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

In an op-ed titled (in the Washington Post version) "Three Cheers for July 2," writer Andrew Trees writes:

With the traditional media admitting they find it hard to curb their enthusiasm for Barack Obama, John McCain demonstrated again today that he is reaching out to the new media, giving blogging critics from the right and left the opportunity to participate in the blogger conference calls he has been regularly conducting. The Washington Times noted the phenomenon in an article of May 16, McCain widens dialogue on blogs, reporting that three of the seven questions in the May 15 conference call were posed by liberal-leaning bloggers.

Of the half-dozen or so questions McCain took in today's blogger call [in which I participated], one was from a blogger from the left. James Kirchick, a New Republic assistant editor/blogger [and National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association 2007 Journalist of the Year], quizzed McCain on his position on the proposed amendment to the California constitution limiting marriage to one man and one woman [McCain expressed support for the amendment and for the ballot initiative giving citizens the right to vote on it].

The most barbed question actually came from the right. Quin Hillyer of the Washington Examiner began by expressing "all due respect," eliciting a wry "I always like that beginning" from the senator. Hillyer went on to describe what he characterized as "one of the most frequently aired complaints from conservatives," to wit, that "when you disagree with conservatives you seem to use the anger and the language of the left, and to question not just conservative positions but motive or integrity." Hillyer asked for assurances that McCain would "avoid that tendency" if he were elected President. McCain fundamentally disagreed with the premise, stating that he treated all people with respect.

The Washington Post reported Thursday that National Public Radio, long a taxpayer-subsidized sandbox for Sixties-retread liberalism, has decided to keep its headquarters in the District of Columbia -- thanks to a huge 20-year property tax holiday. "Neil O. Albert, deputy mayor for planning and economic development, said that NPR will not pay property taxes on the building for 20 years, saving $40 million. The city has agreed not to raise property taxes by more than 3 percent on the station's Massachusetts Avenue building for two decades, or until NPR sells it."

Reporters Yolanda Woodlee and Miranda Spivack also reported other local property owners were incensed at the special dealing as their taxes multiply:

Nicholas Deoudes, who owns three buildings less than a mile from the future NPR location, said that his property taxes increased last year from $13,614 to $36,151. Deoudes, who has owned the buildings for 29 years, said the city needs to help longtime business owners who stayed when the area was a "ghost town."

Author and political reporter Timothy Carney has an interesting item this morning in the Washington Examiner about how Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) practically gets campaign contribution kickbacks from her support for subsidies to the drug industry for the so-called emergency contraceptive pill Plan B. Emphasis mine. (h/t James Joyner):

Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., portrays herself as a scourge of the pharmaceutical industry, but she has shown that she’s willing to help a drugmaker if that’s what it takes to profit Planned Parenthood, her indispensable political ally.

Clinton’s campaign Web site touts that she has “battled the big drug companies.” Yet she has sponsored many bills that would directly subsidize Barr Laboratories, maker of the emergency contraceptive pill Plan B, which also functions as an abortifacient. Thanks to a deal cut between Barr and Planned Parenthood, those taxpayer subsidies will yield generous profits for the pro-choice group that every four years spends millions trying to elect a Democrat to the White House.

In retrospect it seems less and less surprising that Google ever agreed to the Communist Chinese government's demands on censorship (see here and here). It seems the Internet giant and Democratic campaign contribution engine is banning anti-MoveOn.org ads (h/t Malkin):

When the left-wing media wants something, the Constitution apparently becomes irrelevant. Take the latest attempt by Congress to give congressional representation to the District of Columbia, which fell three votes short of moving to a full Senate vote Tuesday.

Check the establishment media, and you'll have no trouble finding stories decrying the plight of the taxed, but unrepresented, citizens of the District and touting the importance of giving these poor (mostly Democratic) souls representation. Finding stories raising the question of whether or not it's constitutional to do so is another matter.

Chicago, like Washington, D.C., has a stringent gun ban. So naturally the move by the District to defend the ban before the Supreme Court will be big news in the Windy City. Yet that doesn't excuse the Chicago Tribune's James Oliphant for breezing over gun rights advocates in his article, "D.C. gun case may hit Chicago."

Oliphant began by telling his readers that gun rights advocates would come gunning for Chicago's gun ban if they succeed before the high Court.:

The District of Columbia is going to the Supreme Court to protect its 1976 law that effectively disarmed its crime-plagued law-abiding civilian populace. In addition to an editorial cheering on the appeal, Washington's largest broadsheet is all to happy to skew its front-page coverage accordingly.

In their September 5 article "D.C. Case Could Shape Gun Laws," reporters Robert Barnes and David Nakamura quoted from gun ban proponents Mayor Adrian Fenty (D) and D.C. Attorney General Linda Singer as they laid out their arguments for the gun ban. Only one opponent of the gun ban was quoted, and even then his ink was wasted on explaining his next move:

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

That was the cry of many an alternative rock fan in D.C. in January 2005 when WHFS went from alt-rock to 99.1 El Zol, a Spanish language station playing mostly salsa music. [Although to be perfectly honest most music snobs agree that WHFS was past its prime in cutting edge programming, having become too corporate, etc.] Don't expect the same donning of sackloth and ashes to mourn the loss of persistent money-loser, Washington Post Radio.

Yes, the Washington broadsheet's radio edition, once described lovingly by a radio executive as "NPR on caffeine" will shut down in September, the Post's Paul Farhi reported in the August 28 paper.:

The Hill newspaper can be a good read for Capitol Hill coverage. It goes deeper than the superficial treatment the MSM often gives legislative matters.

That said, it seems to me the paper is taking at best a curious tack on an issue dividing fiscal conservatives of late: whether to sew up a federal tax loophole on private equity compensation and effectively raise some taxes as a result.

The Hill is painting the matter as one of conservative activists versus their GOP congressional allies with Jessica Holzer's July 18 article, "Conservatives break with GOP leaders on tax bill." The lede for the article lends the impression that some conservatives are finding a tax they actually like:

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is at it again, waging war on another person who has dared to speak out against radical Islam.

This time it's syndicated columnist and friend of the MRC and NewsBusters, Cal Thomas, who, in a WTOP radio commentary compared radical Islam to a "slow-spreading cancer."

You can read more about it at WTOPNews.com.

CAIR is calling on its adherents to call WTOP to complain about Thomas.

Follow this link to WTOP's "Contact Us" page for information on how to contact the station to register your support of Mr. Thomas.

Right on cue, as the illegal immigrant amnesty bill failed to get the required support for passage in the Senate, the MSM is here to tell us mean spirited LEGAL Americans how "hard" it is on all those poor, innocent ILLEGAL migrants who break the law to come here by the millions. Yes, folks, women and children hardest hit, as the old saw goes. Of course, it is nearly ignored by the MSM that these people are not just "innocents" but are here knowingly breaking our laws and then blaming us when they find life a bit uncomfortable -- and a bit uncomfortable is all they are facing it should be remembered.

Three quick reports are indicative of how the MSM is making the average, legal American out to be an evil, racist, selfish creep by urging their elected officials to think of their own constituents before they think of undeserving foreign invaders.

In a landmark 5-4 case today, the U.S. Supreme Court found that two school systems had improperly used race as a consideration in managing the public school districts. Web sites for many newspapers have carried Associated Press coverage of the ruling, and the later the revision of the AP report, the more information tends to be packed in them.

As of 1:15 a.m. Eastern when I started this post*, the Los Angeles Times front page linked to an AP story published just before 11 a.m. Eastern. But in that version of the AP story, Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote the majority opinion, is not quoted at all. Yet a similar AP story (perhaps the same story but with fewer paragraphs edited out) was published just minutes later in the Washington Examiner.