Joe Davidson

In seven days, the Washington Post:

• Ran 11 articles related to D.C.'s new law allowing same-sex marriage.
• Devoted 543 inches of column space to the ruling - equal to nearly four full pages.
• Printed 14 photos of gay celebrations, including a prominent one of two men kissing.
• Quoted supporters 11 times more often than opponents - 67 to 6.
• Repeatedly compared gay marriage to the historic civil rights movement. 

Nobody can accuse The Washington Post of being objective when it came to covering the District of Columbia's decision to legalize same-sex marriage. The Post has reported on the event with a celebratory zeal more appropriate to The Advocate or The Blade.

Less than a week after Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell said the newspaper had an "Obama tilt," we were reminded again today of the paper's institutional bias against conservatives. Two columnists, Howard Kurtz and Joe Davidson, are guilty.

Kurtz analyzes whether Sarah Palin has gone overboard in her attempt to dispel leaks from bitter McCain campaign staffers. He counters Palin's criticism of "the rumors, the speculation, even in mainstream media, that Trig wasn't actually my child." Kurtz says that's not true:

In fact, no mainstream outlet published the Internet rumors until the McCain campaign issued a statement, during the GOP convention, that Palin's teenage daughter Bristol was pregnant.

"Here's another sad sign of our economic times: Never before has the U.S. Postal Service laid off workers. Now, it's a real possibility," lamented Joe Davidson in the October 3 "Federal Diary" feature for the Washington Post.

But isn't that part of the problem with government in the first place? Rather than trimming expenses and payroll during tough economic times, the federal bureaucracy stubbornly insist on being immune to market forces that affect the private sector.

Davidson quoted American Postal Workers Union President William Burris that "for the first time in postal history, the losses cannot be recovered by postage rate increases."

Wow. Cry me a river. Davidson fails to explain that one major reason the federal tax-exempt USPS has been able to rate-hike its way out of trouble before is that, by federal law, it has a monopoly on the delivery of first class mail.