Amanda Carpenter

Is The Washington Post playing favorites with causes that inspire people to exercise their First Amendment rights and take to the streets to protest? When it comes to opposition to Democratic efforts to reform health care versus opposition to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it appears so.

In a March 20 Washington Post story headlined "Obama delivers plea to 'help us fix this system,'" Ben Pershing, Paul Kane and Lori Montgomery suggested House Democrats were gaining momentum in their pursuit of the 216 votes needed to pass health care reform legislation, despite "hundreds" of "tea party" protesters rallying outside the U.S. Capitol. (h/t Amanda Carpenter)

"Outside the Capitol, hundreds of 'tea party' protesters rallied against the legislation, jeering Democratic lawmakers as they passed and holding signs reading 'We'll Remember in November' and 'Revolution,' Pershing, Kane and Montgomery wrote.

Left-wing talker Stephanie Miller inaccurately claimed on CNN’s Larry King Live on Thursday that former President Clinton “put the Cole bombers in jail.” Miller also predictably blasted former President Bush for not “taking responsibility for 9/11,” in contrast to President Obama’s recent acceptance of responsibility for intelligence failures prior to the attempted underwear bombing on Christmas [audio clip from the segment available here].
                   
Host Larry King first turned to the leftist talk show host during a panel discussion which began 12 minutes into the 9 pm Eastern hour: “Stephanie, the President said the buck stops with him. Was that a good move today?” Miller immediately made her full Bush Derangement Syndrome apparent in her response:

MILLER: Well, it’s certainly a different move than we ever heard in the Bush administration. I never heard anybody taking responsibility for 9/11, for Katrina. I thought he stepped to the plate. And I couldn’t disagree with Paul Bremer [who appeared in the previous segment] more, Larry. I think he [Obama] is prosecuting the exact same way President Bush prosecuted the shoe bomber, Richard Reid, as a criminal. You don’t want to make them holy warriors. You want to prosecute them as what they are and that’s criminals, and that’s what Clinton did when he put the previous- you know, Cole bombers in jail, instead of letting them get away, like Osama bin Laden.

Well, it's not quite as bad as Paul Krugman critiquing the Fox Business Network, but a little troubling because tax dollars are being spent to undertake such an effort.

A Nov. 27 post by incoming White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer on the The White House Blog attempted to fact check a Nov. 27 column by Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, proving the left-wing noise machine isn't the only shop in Washington, D.C. criticizing conservative voices (h/t Amanda Carpenter of The Washington Times).

"In today's Washington Post, Charles Krauthammer takes great pains to paint a bleak picture of health care reform as ‘monstrous,' ‘overregulated,' and rife with ‘arbitrary bureaucratic inventions,'" Pfeiffer wrote. "The columnist's argument may be cogent and well-written, but it is wholly inaccurate."

On June 17, FNC’s “O’Reilly Factor” focused a “Viewer Warning” segment on the Culture & Media Institute’s new Special Report: “Blue Tube: Four Reasons to Keep Your Kids Away From YouTube.”

“A new study by the Media Research Center – a conservative group, but an accurate group – indicates that pornographic content is available to kids on YouTube pretty much all the time,” host Bill O’Reilly said.

Amanda Carpenter of the Washington Times, “The Factor’s” regular Internet correspondent, explained some of the study findings. “If you put in a search term like ‘porn,’ into the YouTube site,” she said, “you’ll come up with 330,000 different hits. And, while the Web site says it warns … it bans, excuse me … explicit pornography, there are tons of things out there that resemble, you know, soft-core type of porn, girls stripping, allusions to lesbianism, fetishes. And they say its porn – they advertise it as porn. Other pornographers put links to their own real sites that are pornographic.”

O’Reilly asked about the lack of safeguards that the CMI study uncovered. “So say a 12-year-old wants to see this stuff,” he said. “All they have to do is lie about their age, right?”

Time's Joe Klein on Sunday accused conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh of "delivering misinformation, lies to a large audience in America."

Such was said during quite a debate between himself and the Washington Times' Amanda Carpenter on CNN's "Reliable Sources."

After Klein angrily made this comment, even host Howard Kurtz seemed a bit taken aback by it saying, "Well, lies is a strong word, but we'll come back to that another time."

What follows is the video and partial transcript of this exchange that began when Kurtz brought up some of the potentially over the line jokes made at Saturday evening's White House Correspondents' Association dinner:

In the midst of a segment on Rush Limbaugh on Sunday morning's Reliable Sources portion of CNN's State of the Union, host Howard Kurtz scolded his journalistic colleagues for a remark which “totally got missed by the media,” how CNN host D.L. Hughley charged “that the Republican convention 'literally looks like Nazi Germany.' I don't understand how he can get away with saying that. I think that is an outrage.”

Kurtz, the Washington Post's media reporter, interjected his criticism after guest Amanda Carpenter of the Washington Times, and formerly with TownHall.com, had defended RNC Chairman Michael Steele's characterization of Limbaugh's rhetoric as “ugly,” a slam on Limbaugh he made on Hughley's show, D.L. Hughley Breaks the News, last weekend. She guessed Steele was thinking of “Rush Limbaugh's interpretation of 'Barack the Magic you know what,' so when he said 'ugly,' that was ugly, that was a very ugly part of the discussion that was in the run up to his election.” (Of course, “Barack the Magic Negro” was a song parody inspired by a black writer who used that term in a Los Angeles Times op-ed about Obama.)

In the '90s, many conservatives referred to CNN as "The Clinton News Network" due to its obvious biases towards the 42nd president.

Years later, just days after the inauguration of the 44th president, one of that network's on-air hosts officially labeled MSNBC "The Obama Network."

You gotta love it.

During Sunday's "Reliable Sources," when the subject of MSNBC came up, Kurtz said:

"CNBC Reports" host Larry Kudlow believes free-market capitalism is the best path to prosperity. Too bad CNN "Lou Dobbs Tonight" host Lou Dobbs doesn't.

Dobbs attacked Kudlow during the Jan. 14 broadcast of "Lou Dobbs Tonight" for commenting on a dinner meeting of conservative pundits at the home of Washington Post columnist George Will on Jan. 13. Kudlow was not included in person or by phone to respond to Dobbs' criticism.

"This is Larry Kudlow - one of the folks invited to a conservative fest with the president-elect last night," Dobbs said. "I'd like to just share, everybody - what a Larry Kudlow-conservative person does after meeting with the president-elect."

Dobbs cited a few lines from Kudlow's appearance on CNBC's Jan. 14 "The Call" - "He is charming, he is terribly smart, bright, well informed. He has a great sense of humor." Then Dobbs skipped moments in Kudlow's exchange with "The Call" co-host Melissa Francis and added - "He's so well informed and he loves to deal with both sides of an issue."

Townhall.com's Amanda Carpenter rips into the Washington Post today over its editorial about Democratic Sens. Kent Conrad (N.D.) and Chris Dodd (Conn.) and their cozy arrangement for mortgage refinances with Countrywide.

For some background, check out my June 13 blog on ABCNews.com's treatment of the story.

I'll let Carpenter take it from here (emphasis mine):

The left and the media love to hyperventilate about the right wing “hate speech” on the Internet, but the anger and vitriol of the left dwarfs that of the right, especially where female or minority bloggers are concerned. Hateful comments are not uncommon at lefty blogs like Daily Kos. That kind of hostility forces the Huffington Post to occassionally close comments on articles involving certain topics like Israel, the military or even Margaret Thatcher.

Right Wing News addressed this trend in its excellent ongoing series “Blogging While Female: 5 Conservative Women Bloggers Talk About Gender Issues and the Blogosphere.” (Pt 2 here). RWN sampled a variety of righty opinion from Michelle Malkin, Mary Katherine Ham, LaShawn Barber, Rachel Lucas and more, and they discussed experiencing misogynistic and often disturbingly aggressive comments.

Pictures of them are photoshopped into violent or sexually explicit positions, and they are stalked, online and occasionally offline. Liberals track down their addresses and phone numbers and leave obscene messages, even threaten rape. Moderate blogger Ann Althouse nailed the root of the hostility, “...people on the Left think you are evil if you don't agree with them, that you're actually a bad person” (all bold mine).