The top-left corner of the Saturday Washington Post carried the decidedly inaccurate headline "For Obama Cabinet, A Team of Moderates." Reporter Alec MacGillis asserted that Obama finished assembling "a team full of outsize personalities with overlapping jurisdictions and nominees who are known more for pragmatism than for strong leanings on the issues they will oversee." Hillary Clinton and Tom Daschle, no strong liberal leanings?

Naming Rep. Hilda Solis (lifetime American Conservative Union voting score: a tiny 2) to the Labor spot wasn’t moderate: "the daughter of a union family who has a strongly pro-labor voting record, came as a relief to some liberals who had grown slightly anxious about Obama's commitment to organized labor's agenda....But many of Obama's other picks reflect his apparent preference for practical-minded centrists who have straddled big policy debates rather than staking out the strongest pro-reform positions."

Liberals have "the strongest pro-reform positions." Can't a centrist be a reformer? The Post story stars former Bush speechwriter Peter Wehner warning about all this pragmatism as a potential problem:

President Elect Barack Obama picked Rep. Hilda Solis (D-CA) as his Labor Secretary today. While groups like La Raza, N.O.W., and NARAL are likely to be pleased, Solis is also likely to please the liberal group Media Matters.

In late May of this year, she teamed up with Media Matters to present a report ( titled "Fear and Loathing in Prime Time/Immigration Myths and Cable News") that said cable news shows hosted by Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck, and Lou Dobbs presented a negative image of “undocumented immigrants.”

Media Matters has the You Tube Video video here. At the very end of the video Solis says, “We all have to be responsible as well and make the cable companies responsible.”

On May 27th, Solis was interviewed by National Public Radio about the Media Matters report. The new censorship doctrine may very well come in the form of government-mandated diversification of media. Solis talks about wanting a more accountable media and that certain cable shows have already “incited” “hate crimes.” (my emphasis throughout:)