Missouri

On Thursday, NPR's Morning Edition used a Republican mayor to boost Obama's push for infrastructure spending. On Friday, the same show displayed a new Tea Party Republican House member representing tornado-ravaged Joplin, Missouri to gush over the effectiveness of the Obama disaster relief team, as if to say "No Katrinas here, America." Janet Napolitano told NPR Long would give them a "12" out of 10.

Liberals have this habit of thinking that disaster relief somehow rebuts "foes of Big Government," or that Tea Party members ran on the promise of abolishing disaster aid. NPR reporter Frank Morris pressed hard on the chastened-anti-statist angle:

A reporter for the St. Louis paper the Riverfront Times has a message for all the members of the Tea Party movement he smeared with false accusations of political violence: "I have no regrets."

Chad Garrison penned a blog post last week speculating that a member of the Tea Party had firebombed the office of Rep. Russ Carnahan, D-Mo. "Given what we know of [the perpatrator] - 50, white, angry - he certainly fits the demographics of a Tea Party member," Garrison wrote. " "On second thought," he added, "maybe he's not a Tea Party member. Firebombing your opponent's office seems a little too, um, sane for that group."

But it turns out the man was actually a disgruntled former Carnahan staffer and blogger for the left-wing site Talking Points Memo, not a member of the Tea Party. Members of the movement asked Garrison to retract. His response: lighten up, wingnuts.

In the first voter referendum on ObamaCare, Missourians on Tuesday overwhelmingly (by 71 to 29 percent) backed Proposition C which called upon the state to enact a statute to “deny the government authority to penalize citizens for refusing to purchase private health insurance,” an outcome the St. Louis Post-Dispatch described as “rebuking President Barack Obama's administration.” On Wednesday night, however, the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts skipped the bad news for President Obama – yet all found time to celebrate his 49th birthday.  

(The Missouri repudiation of a central tenet of ObamaCare came a day after another setback for ObamaCare which the newscasts also ignored: A federal district judge in Richmond rejected the Obama administration’s quest to block Virginia’s lawsuit challenging Congress’ jurisdiction to mandate individuals buy health insurance.)

“At the White House today, they sang to the President,” ABC anchor Diane Sawyer touted over a graphic which declared it Obama’s “Big Day.” Viewers were treated to one stanza of “Happy birthday to you!” before Sawyer related: “He says we've watched him go gray, and the photographs since the campaign do show a little speckle in that hair.”

In Missouri, a high school student was assigned Michael Moore's documentary "Sicko" to analyze for 50% of her grade in her senior Literature and Composition class. Perhaps more shocking is that the teacher who assigned the movie also denounced the same student in front of the class as a "teabagger".

Make sure you read this post at the new Eyeblast Blog for all the details on what happened.

A few weeks ago we wrote about the undue and disingenuous attack led by Barack Obama's Chicago HQ perpetrated against Chicago radio host Dr. Milt Rosenberg. Well, last week they did it again, raising their legions to attack the host and his radio station (WGN) and trying to have the unassuming radio host thrown off the air. And what was his "crime"? Rosenberg had the gall to actually interview two conservative writers who were investigating the life and history of the Obamessiah. I live in Chicago and have listened to Milt Rosenberg many times. His show is one of the most intelligent radio shows in the country, filled with high concepts and serious guests. I also heard both radio shows being protested by Obama's radio brownshirts and there wasn’t a thing wrong with either of the shows. On the first, conservative writer Stanley Kurtz was invited on to speak about his investigation into the ties Obama has with American domestic terrorist William Ayers. In this case, Rosenberg offered airtime to the Obama campaign and it refused the offer. With the second program, Rosenberg had on David Freddoso, author of the recent New York Times best selling book "The Case Against barack Obama." In the later case, Rosenberg even had a lefty Obama apologist on air with Fredoso, there to counter his every anti-Obama comment. Yet, the Obama campaign still tried to destroy Milt Rosenberg’s career by mounting an email attack campaign as well as urging calls to the station.

When it comes to Islam, the approach of too many media outlets seems to be to avoid questioning authority. Whether this attitude stems from fear (as in the case of Lawrence O'Donnell), ignorance, or plain old-fashioned political correctness doesn't really matter because the end result is the same: when extremist Islamic groups like the Council on Islamic Relations say "jump," far too many news organizations say "how high."

It's not asking for much, really. When, for instance, other religious groups (be they Catholic, Mormon, Jewish, etc.) make complaints, the usual procedure is to talk to the person or group being accused and allow them to tell there side of the story. It's basic journalism. It appears, however, that St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Tim Townsend doesn't believe that, at least when the complaint involves CAIR making allegations against the conservative blog Little Green Footballs. Let's take a look:

Now that the military surge led by General Petraeus is clearly succeeding in lowering the violence level in Iraq, the liberal media cheerleaders for defeat are scrambling for a new strategy to convince Americans that Iraq is a disaster. But what line will they choose?
The New York Times has apparently decided that since success on the military end of things is now fairly evident, that it is time to begin chipping away at the political side. To this end, they have once again utilized their favorite tool, the anonymous source, to try to destroy Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
The Times story, posted on the front page of their web site, is entitled Report Cites Grave Concerns on Iraq's Government.

The pro-socialized medicine lobbyists like to circulate U.S. health care system horror stories, such as this one they are circulating on email lists today (and which Daily Kos editorialized about here) about a man who allegedly murdered his wife, supposedly because he couldn't afford her medical bills.

When it comes to the First Amendment, too many people in this country have a distorted sense of what that document actually means.

This is especially true of the liberal elite media which construe the First Amendment in the following manner: 1) Congress shall not make any attempt to censor or diminish the rights of any media outlet--except those dominated by the right. 2) Congress shall not restrict flag burning or any form of pornography. 3) Religious people do not have the right to express their religion in public. 4) Political speech is equal to money and therefore can be censored at whim.

To those who doubt that, take a gander at this recent Kansas City Star editorial, denouncing the new John Roberts court:

The result, made clear in rulings handed down this week and earlier, is empowerment for the powerful and callousness toward individuals.

One of the most routine (and inaccurate) tics of news coverage of Missouri's cloning amendment and other medical-research stories is to describe the controversy over embryo-destroying stem cell research as simply a fight over "stem cell research." To declare that a pro-life politician is "against stem cell research" is quite inaccurate (since they favor research on adult stem cells and from umbilical cord blood). But Kevin Tibbles did that twice this morning to Sen. Jim Talent on Today, and never once even used the word "embryo"  or "embryonic" to describe the specific human lives being destroyed in the research process.

Co-host Meredith Vieira: "You know Kevin we heard a lot about the race after Rush Limbaugh criticized those ads that Michael Fox did supporting stem cell research and the Democratic candidate Claire McCaskill. How much do you think that controversy will play into the voters' minds today when they go to the polls?"

Over at the National Center for Public Policy Research’s Blog, I’ve floated an idea I believe could help journalists and editorial writers be more accurate – even when they’d rather not.

I suggested that online versions of newspaper and magazine articles include footnotes.

I conceded that footnotes in the paper version of publications would be distracting and costly, but the major impediment to including them in online editions would probably simply be resistance by the writers themselves. Footnotes are a hassle for writers -- but they do have a way if helping to keep writers honest.

Blogger and Washington Examiner editorial page editor Mark Tapscott had a few thoughts in response: