Del Quentin Wilber

In October of last year, MSNBC cravenly played the race card by showcasing South Carolina Democratic Party chairman Dick Harpootlian insisting that that Palmetto State's new voter ID law would amount to "electoral genocide" of blacks. MSNBC's Chris Matthews carped that the GOP was "randy" to "roll up the vote." There are countless other instances of the liberal network attacking South Carolina and other Southern states as racist for pursuing stricter voter ID laws.

Well, on Wednesday, in a unanimous ruling no less, a federal court ruled that there was absolutely nothing wrong with the law, but directed that it not take effect until after the presidential elections, for fear of a "potential for chaos" should state officials try to enforce it this November, the Washington Post's Del Quentin Wilber reported in the October 11 paper.

A federal judge threw out a spurious lawsuit by serial atheist litigant Michael Newdow. Yet in reporting the story in its January 16 print edition, the Washington Post made it sound like a federal judge has ended the suspsense and permitted prayers to be offered at the inauguration, as though they were seriously in danger in the first place.

"Judge Clears the Way for Prayer at Swearing-In," declared the page B4 headline in the Inauguration Watch digest. Staff writer Del Quentin Wilber echoed the headline's language in his lede:

A federal judge yesterday cleared the way for government officials and ministers to pray and make references to God during the swearing-in.

Wilber explained that "U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton refused to grant an injunction in a lawsuit seeking to block such references." Nowhere in his 3-paragraph-long brief did Wilber mention Newdow by name, nor his history of frivolous litigation such as trying to remove "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance and "In God We Trust" from U.S. currency.