With Washington, D.C. buried beneath at least 20 inches of snow, and with more in the forecast, common sense would suggest global warming alarmists look elsewhere to make the argument to raise awareness for their concerns.

But no, Dylan Ratigan thinks it's ridiculous to suggest all the snowfall totals could cast doubt on the theory of anthropogenic global warming. On MSNBC's Feb. 8 "The Dylan Ratigan Show," Ratigan criticized those who would dare express misgivings about climate change based on the so-called "snowpocalypse."

"Here's the problem - these ‘snowpocalypses' that have been going through D.C. and other extreme weather events are precisely what climate scientists have been predicting, fearing and anticipating because of global warming," Ratigan said.

Of the three morning shows on Thursday, only NBC’s Today show skipped any mention of Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell’s Republican response to the President’s State of the Union address. Both ABC’s Good Morning America and CBS’s Early Show gave McDonnell’s rebuttal at least minor attention.

On the Early Show, Chip Reid explained, "Virginia's newly inaugurated governor Bob McDonnell gave the Republican response. He echoed the sentiment of many in his party who believe big government is not the solution." Reid then featured a clip of McDonnell calling for limited government.

ABC co-host George Stephanopoulos only referenced McDonnell as an intro to a question for former Governor Mitt Romney: "Jobs. That's the President's number one priority. In the Republican response last night, Governor McDonnell said the same thing."

A publicly-traded corporation, The Washington Post Company (NYSE: WPO) publishes a daily newspaper which includes daily editorials aimed at influencing public opinion inside the corridors of Congress, White House, and regulatory agencies, and ultimately over voter preferences at the polls.

What's more, the Post Company's newspaper has demonstrated its willingness to devote virtually limitless resources in its efforts to pound out a negative drumbeat in the final days before an election. Just ask former Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) or Gov. Bob McDonnell (R-Va.), two targets of the paper's openly hostile campaigns to derail their candidacies in favor of their endorsed candidates, Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) and State Sen. Creigh Deeds (D-Va.) respectively.

Yet when it comes to conservative groups or non-mainstream media for-profit corporation engaging in the same use of "unlimited independent expenditures" to influence voters, that's an entirely different story for the Post, which slammed yesterday's Supreme Court ruling as "Judicial Activism Inc.":

While it has every right to do so, and we at NewsBusters do not take issue with a newspaper's right to issue liberal pronouncements on clearly-marked editorial pages, it is worth noting from time to time the persistence with which liberal newspapers lead the charge for liberal agenda items, particularly when the issue at hand is tax increases.

That brings us to the Washington Post -- no fan of incoming Republican Governor-elect Bob McDonnell (R-Va.) -- which today counseled the incoming executive to "choose to be a problem-solver" on the state's transportation concerns by raising taxes.

Of course, this lobbying for tax increases is hardly new. The paper endorsed tax increases during the 2009 campaign and continued its pro-tax hike drumbeat without skipping a beat the day after the election. As my colleague Scott Whitlock noted on November 5:

Three days ago, I argued that the Washington Post was ginning up a new campaign to discredit Republican governor-elect Bob McDonnell, having failed to sink his candidacy  by its continual harping about his culturally conservative graduate's thesis at Pat Robertson's Regent University.

Today the Post confirmed my suspicions as its editorial board officially weighed in, proclaiming Robertson -- who made some controversial statements following the Fort Hood shootings about Islam -- to be "Mr. McDonnell's albatross":

It's unfair to expect politicians to be held accountable for every asinine thing that a supporter happens to say. But in this case -- when the supporter is among Mr. McDonnell's most prominent associates, and the level of support is extremely high -- it's important to know that he is as disgusted by Mr. Robertson's casual bigotry as millions of his constituents are. 

This begs the question how the Post handled the Obama/Rev. Wright controversy. My research indicates the Post was thrilled at Obama's March 2008 non-denunciation denunciation of Wright so much that the next month it all but declared it would never hound Obama ever again for anything stupid Wright should say. Let's look first at the March 19, 2008 "Moment of Truth" editorial (emphases mine):

It failed to make his master's thesis at the university Pat Robertson founded a campaign killer, but the Washington Post is still intent on finding ways to damage governor-elect Bob McDonnell even before he takes office.

In a Metro-section front-pager today, Post staffer Rosalind Helderman insisted that some recent remarks by Robertson about the nature of Islam following the Fort Hood shooting have "put McDonnell in a bind" and are forcing the Republican governor-elect "to confront how he plans to handle his friendship with" the "long-time ally" and "highly controversial figure."

Just four paragraphs into her story, Helderman cast McDonnell as one who "tried during the race to convince Virginians that he was a social conservative who could speak more broadly to issues that cross party lines."

Of course, McDonnell did just that, winning the Virginia governor's race by an 18-point margin (59-41 over Democrat Creigh Deeds) in a race where the economy, taxes and transportation were the key issues, so it's specious for Helderman to paint the governor-elect as though he were someone of whom moderate voters were skeptical.

On Sunday’s Meet the Press, MSNBC hostess Rachel Maddow broke out the ten-foot-pole of disgust for losing Virginia gubernatorial candidate Creigh Deeds. But back in September, she suggested Bob McDonnell’s thesis from "Pat Robertson’s Liberty University" would sink him: "Here’s where Republican electoral chances stop being separate from the wild-excesses of the conservative movement."

Oops. Actually, double oops, Miss Maddow: Robertson’s college is Regent University. Isn’t it amazing that her liberal fans always tout how she "does her homework"?

Here’s Maddow on Sunday:

I think that if, if Republicans could choose to have anything to extrapolate from the, from the Bob McDonnell race, it would be to have as an opponent Creigh Deeds. If they could pick anything that they wanted. I mean, Creigh Deeds was a, was a marketably ineffective Democratic candidate, essentially running away from the president, running from everything popular in the Democratic agenda and doing it in a stylistically poor way. So I'm sure he's a very nice guy; he was a very bad candidate.

During the 2009 Virginia gubernatorial election, the Washington Post waged a relentless campaign to defeat Republican Bob McDonnell. Starting on Wednesday, after the GOP nominee received almost 59 percent of the vote, the newspaper began dispensing advice: Raise taxes.

On Wednesday, a Post editorial assessed the "lessons" of the election and whined, "We remain skeptical of the flimsy filigree he passed off as a transportation plan, which rejects any fresh taxes to pay for new roads. But by dint of his victory he has earned the right to show it will work." [Emphasis added.]

Even though voters overwhelmingly opposed the higher taxes candidate, Democrat Creigh Deeds, the editorial continued: "Yet it remains true that the two of the most successful, best-respected and most popular of Virginia's governors in the past quarter century...raised taxes to put the state's finances on a surer footing and invest in the long-term health of its roads, bridges, school and public safety."

Today's Metro section front-pager by Washington Post's Amy Gardner -- "McDonnell team rose to challenge in darkest hour" -- reminded me of a line from "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy"

"From deep down in my stomach, with every inch of me, I pure, straight hate you. But g*d***it, do I respect you!" seethes rival TV station anchor Wes Mantooth (Vince Vaughn) to Burgundy (Will Ferrell).

The Washington Post hatefully threw all it had at making the "thesis issue" a career killer for McDonnell, who went on to win 54 percent of the women's vote in Tuesday election. But looking back, Post staffer Amy Gardner gave readers a look into how the McDonnell campaign hunkered down, stuck with a disciplined message, and thwarted the paper's scheme to "macaca" McDonnell:

Does the National Journal's Hotline inhabit the same universe as the rest of us?  Democrats lost two-out-of-three among last night's big races.  But in declaring Winners and Losers among non-candidates involved with the campaigns, the only Losers Hotline saw were . . . Republicans and conservatives, with nary a Dem in sight!

Chris Matthews was only too happy to seize on the Hotline hitlist during his Sideshow segment on this evening's Hardball.  Here were Hotline's three Losers:

• Sarah Palin: for jumping into Hoffman's losing cause, whereas McDonell and Christie didn't invite her in and won.
• Pete Sessions: the Chairman of the NRCC, who went 0-2 in special congressional elections.
• Club For Growth: which backed Hoffman.

Hotline's inconsistent logic was glaring . . .

The G.O.P. had two big victories yesterday in off-year elections, winning the race for governor in New Jersey and Virginia for the first time since 1997. The New York Times's coverage was dominated by three themes used to explain away the success of Republicans:

The Republicans won by appearing moderate.

The congressional race in upstate New York revealed deep divisions within the G.O.P.

These off-year elections don't mean much anyway (except when Democrats win).

1) Republicans Won by Moderating:

Even after wins by two conservative Republicans, the Times spin was that moderation had prevailed, arguing that both New Jersey Governor-elect Chris Christie and Virginia Governor-elect Bob McDonnell won by trimming their social conservative stands.

In a Tuesday web post before returns were in, the paper's chief political reporter Adam Nagourney said that even a win by Virginia conservative McDonnell would be a victory for moderation:

NBC's David Gregory, on Wednesday's Today show, downplayed the huge GOP wins in New Jersey and Virginia as merely reflecting the "anti-incumbency mood," and "the change message that Obama" started last year. Gregory, however, did play up Democrat Bill Owens' win over Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman in the New York 23 congressional race, and even more absurdly Bob McDonnell's win in Virginia as evidence that the Republican's path to victory is to go moderate, as the Meet the Press host postulated: "What's striking is you have the results in New York 23, which Democrats will hold up as a great result for them, but then you have McDonnell winning in Virginia, a purple state. He's a social conservative for his political career, yet he runs more as a pragmatist, as more of a centrist and look at the result. He wins big, wins big among independent voters."

The following is the full Gregory segment with Meredith Vieira as it was aired on the November 4, Today show:

Pity the staff at the Washington Post. Their compatriots at the New York or Los Angeles Times luxuriate in a sea of enlightenment, with blue state voters as far as the eye can see. But the Posties must live and work in uncomfortable proximity to Red State Virginia, with only the thin buffer of the Northern Virginia suburbs between them and the gun-toting snake handlers.

Every now and then the Post publishes the journalistic equivalent of an involuntary shudder at its plight. The latest was an Oct. 30 editorial excoriating Ken Cuccinelli, the GOP candidate for Virginia attorney general. What gave the Post the vapors are statements Cuccinelli made about homosexuality in an interview with the Norfolk-based Virginian-Pilot.

The Washington Post on Thursday continued its quest to defeat Virginia’s Republican gubernatorial candidate, bizarrely citing a "non-partisan" group that, in reality, has endorsed Bob McDonnell’s Democratic opponent. The article by Anita Kumar contained this loaded headline: "McDonnell critics question ideology: Some saw agenda in legal opinions."

Kumar quoted Claire Guthrie Gastanaga, a lobbyist for "Equality Virginia, a nonpartisan gay rights group." Yet, the front page of Equality Virginia’s website features a press release entitled, "Equality Virginia PAC Endorses Deeds for Governor." The organization’s website makes a distinction between its political action committee (EVPAC) and its "non-partisan" activities. However, Kumar made no such clarification. How can a group be non-partisan and endorse the Democratic nominee?

The Washington Post, which features the motto "An independent newspaper" at the top of its editorial page, endorsed Democratic candidates in 22 of 26 races for the November 3 elections in Virginia. In addition to supporting the Democrats running for governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general, the paper on Friday, Saturday and Sunday weighed in on the state’s House of Delegates races and picked 19 Democrats and only four Republicans.

The Post, which for months has been attacking Bob McDonnell, the GOP’s nominee for governor, also relied on very personal, angry attacks against most of the Republicans in the House of Delegates races. On October 23, the paper editorialized that Delegate Bob Marshall is "the author of off-the-wall legislative antics that even members of his own Republican Party regard as clownish." [Emphasis added.]

His opponent, meanwhile, is a "sober, sane Democrat." On October 25, the paper’s editorial page also deemed Chuck Caputo to be a "sober, sane Democrat" and complimented fellow party member Mark L. Keam as a "thoughtful, serious community activist."

The liberal Washington Post, which for months has been running a seemingly endless series of attack pieces on Virginia’s Republican gubernatorial candidate, appears to have moved on to a new target, the GOP’s choice for Attorney General. On Thursday, the Post featured a column by Robert McCartney on nominee Ken Cuccinelli and included this ominous headline: "Cuccinelli: In your heart, you know he's to the right of right."

For the benefit of readers outside of Virginia, Cuccinelli is a pretty standard conservative. He’s pro-life, pro-Second Amendment. He’s taken positions in support of lower taxes and restraining spending. Certainly, he’s no moderate. Referring to him as "very conservative" would also be fair. But, according to McCartney, he’s a "militant conservative" and someone "who's so ardently conservative he makes [Republican] gubernatorial candidate Robert F. McDonnell sound like a mealy-mouthed moderate."

In an editorial on Wednesday endorsing Cuccinelli’s Democratic AG opponent, the Post used the same hyperbolic, scary language. The unsigned editorial derided Cuccinelli, who is currently a state senator, as a "provocative hard-liner," someone who supports "far-fetched initiatives" and holds "bizarre and incendiary ideas." The paper generally found his campaign "worrying."

A Washington Post staff writer on Wednesday swore that it wasn’t the "goal" of the newspaper to elect Virginia’s Democratic candidate for governor, despite the paper’s wave of attack coverage against the Republican nominee. Participating in a chat on WashingtonPost.com, Amy Gardner did admit that there’s an "argument to be made" over whether the paper did some "‘prolonged’ reporting" on Republican Bob McDonnell’s 1989 college thesis about marriage and the family.

Gardner, who wrote many of the articles on the 20-year-old thesis about feminism and working women, avowed that the subject was a "legitimate news story that then took on a life of its own and that we continued to cover." Took on a life of its own? In the first 12 days after the story broke, the paper published 11 articles on the subject. Wouldn’t something with a "life of its own" have developed naturally without the aggressive help of the Post?

Gardner was responding to a reader question over whether the news outlet’s extensive coverage actually harmed Democrat Creigh Deeds. She retorted, "Well, certainly there's an argument to be made that we did some ‘prolonged’ reporting on the thesis, but it wasn't with the goal of helping Deeds."

In what could be described as the biggest non-surprise of the 2009 Virginia gubernatorial election, the Washington Post on Sunday endorsed Creigh Deeds, the Democratic candidate that its news section has been touting for months. Beginning in late August, the Post ran numerous hit pieces, 12 in the first 11 days, against Republican Bob McDonnell for a 20 year-old college thesis.

The massive, 1391 word editorial slashed Republican Bob McDonnell’s "intolerant" social positions. Readers could be forgiven for asking if this endorsement was really necessary. On August 30, the Post first inserted itself into the Virginia election by declaring, "'89 Thesis A Different Side of McDonnell." The piece by Amy Gardner tried to link McDonnell’s two decade-old Regent University thesis on marriage and the family to some sort of far right agenda:

"During his 14 years in the General Assembly, McDonnell pursued at least 10 of the policy goals he laid out in that research paper, including abortion restrictions, covenant marriage, school vouchers and tax policies to favor his view of the traditional family."

The editorial on Sunday struck a remarkably similar tone:

In its never-ending quest to "macaca" Republican Virginia gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell, the Washington Post has ably illustrated it is far from being a "post-partisan" purveyor of news.

Today in the paper's "Post Partisan" blog, staffer Lee Hockstader displayed once again the paper's determination to help down-in-the-polls liberal Democrat Creigh Deeds limp across the finish line.

Never mind that the offender in question has already apologized for mocking the Democratic state senator -- who, by the way, does NOT have a medically diagnosed speech impediment or disability -- and the alleged "macaca" moment was made not by candidate McDonnell about a Deeds staffer -- which would be truly analogous to the original 2006 George Allen episode -- but by an African-American Democratic businesswoman who supported Obama and current Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine (D), but crossed the aisle this to back the Republican McDonnell due to his economic policies.

What's more, it's hardly earth-shattering news that people at political fundraisers often crack harsh jokes about the politician(s) they are hoping to defeat on Election Day, yet to Hockstader, Johnson's mocking of Creigh Deeds's less-than-artful oratory deserved a 6-paragraph-long entry about how Johnson is like those mean b****es you knew in high school:

Is being endorsed by the Washington Post a good thing for a liberal politician looking to win an election in Virginia?

Such is a question gubernatorial candidate Creigh Deeds (D) has got to be currently asking himself.

Having gotten the Post's blessing before the June primary, Deeds spent the entire summer letting the paper do his dirty work only to find himself losing a race that Democrats should easily have run away with.

In retrospect, Deeds should have smelled a rat in the very endorsement the Post penned in May:

The Washington Post on Friday buried the announcement by Douglas Wilder, a popular Democratic ex-governor of Virginia, to not endorse his party’s current nominee for that office, Creigh Deeds. The Post placed the story, with the bland headline, "Wilder Declines to Endorse Anyone for Governor," below the fold in the Metro section.

In contrast, the Washington Times highlighted it on the front page, with the announcement: "Wilder to Deeds: That’s Not ‘Leadership.’" Over the last month, the Post has engaged in an aggressive campaign to play up a 20-year-old thesis by Republican candidate Bob McDonnell as supposedly anti-woman, producing story after story.

At the same time, the paper has repeatedly downplayed negative articles about Mr. Deeds. For instance, The Post minimized the endorsement of McDonnell by the powerful Fairfax County Chamber of Commerce, a prominent organization in vote-rich Northern Virginia. On Thursday, the Post hid that story on B4 of the Metro page.

The first major electoral contest following any presidential election is the Virginia governor's race, and no less so this year given Barack Obama having been the first Democratic presidential candidate to win the state since 1964. But this year, the Obama magic may have worn off in the Old Dominion, with Republican Bob McDonnell showing a consistent lead over Democratic opponent Creigh Deeds and on target to end eight years of Democratic governors.

As we've documented, the Washington Post has done its best to drag down McDonnell's numbers and boost Deeds, namely by trumpeting a decades-old graduate thesis and hyping it as a potential game-changer in the race.

But today, when it came to a big snag in his campaign, the Post reported but buried an article that cast the Deeds campaign in a decidedly unfavorable light.

The bottom line: either Deeds lied to a police union or his campaign is incredibly inept. Or both.

It seems the Deeds gubernatorial campaign told two different law enforcement interest groups two conflicting positions on collective bargaining. Yet in reporting the story, the Post placed Rosalind S. Helderman's article on page 4 of the Metro section rather than page A1 or even the front page, page B1, of the Metro section.

The Washington Post on Wednesday expanded its attack on Virginia gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell, branching out beyond the Republican’s 1989 master’s thesis to a hit piece on the removal of a 2003 judge and whether or not it was because of homophobia on the part of the then-state delegate. The story centered around Verbena M. Askew, a Virginia judge who had been accused of sexually harassing a female colleague.

Post reporter Amy Gardner, who has written or co-written four of the Post’s 12 anti-McDonnell articles that have run over the last 11 days, stated that the 2003 removal of Askew "led to questions about whether the future Republican gubernatorial candidate thought gays were fit to serve on the bench." In the piece, Gardner left out any mention of the fact that two State House Democrats also voted to deny Askew reappointment. Gardner belatedly admitted this point in a blog on WashingtonPost.com:

The Weekly Standard’s September 14 issue parodied the Washington Post for its biased, obsessive coverage of Virginia gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell, wryly featuring a mock headline that read: "Post Runs Another Story About Its McDonnell Story: Stories to run until ‘controversy’ takes on life of its own, sources say." [Emphasis added]

The Washington Post has published 12 pieces in 11 days highlighting a 1989 Regent University thesis by the Republican about the traditional family structure. The spot-on Weekly Standard parody spoofed, "Three days after publishing a story in hopes of generating a controversy over a master’s thesis written 20 years ago by GOP gubernatorial hopeful Bob McDonnell, The Washington Post will publish another story today about the reaction to its original story, the Washington Post has learned."

The Washington Post continued to attack Virginia gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell on Thursday, highlighting the Republican’s 1989 thesis three times and bringing the paper’s grand total to nine articles in five days. The Post, which recycled George Allen’s "macaca" moment 112 times in the 2006 campaign, featured this headline in the Metro section: "McDonnell's Thesis Is Relevant, Deeds Says: 1989 Paper Highlights Candidates' Differences, Senator Says." [Emphasis added.]

So, the Democratic candidate for governor wants to hype a 20-year-old master’s thesis on the family structure and that automatically makes it news for the Post? Staff reporters Rosalind S. Helderman and Anita Kumar used the Metro section article to parrot comments from the Creigh Deeds campaign on the importance of the thesis: