Michael Laris

Yesterday the Montgomery County [Md.] Council passed into law a 5-cent tax on plastic and paper bags dispensed by  "nearly all retail establishments, not just those that sell food" within the county.

"Among the few exceptions are paper bags from restaurants and pharmacy bags holding prescription drugs," Post staffer Michael Laris noted in his page A1 story.

But Laris left out one huge exemption to the bag tax of concern to the reader: newspaper sleeves like the ones that subscribers of the Post get their daily papers delivered in.

As I noted yesterday in my NB Extra piece, in an October 26 editorial listing endorsements for the Montgomery County [Md.] Council, the Washington Post erroneously stated that the incumbent County Executive Isiah "Ike" Leggett (D) was unopposed in his reelection bid.

That simply is not true, and the Post today issued a correction noting that Leggett does indeed face a challenge, from Republican Doug Rosenfeld.

Yet in today's correction notice, the Post noted that it will print an "editorial on that contest... in the coming days."

The Post most certainly has a right to make such an endorsement, but considering its gross negligence in the first place, should the paper opt simply to refuse to make an endorsement?

A search of the Nexis database from September 15 (the day after the primary election) through October 27 found just two mentions of Rosenfeld. The second was today's correction notice and the first was the very last paragraph of Metro section reporter Michael Laris's September 15 roundup of local primary election results:

• 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.

If abortion clinics serve up abortions, do anti-abortion clinics perform anti-abortions?

I couldn't help but muse that as I read the Washington Post's Metro section below-the-fold front-pager "Disclaimer proposed for anti-abortion clinics."

The November 11 story by Michael Laris explained that "Montgomery County [Md.] officials" are considering a "regulation" that "would require pregnancy centers run by abortion opponents to give women a disclaimer so they don't mistake the centers for medical clinics and so they understand the source of the information given to them."

Laris painted these officials -- seven of the county's nine [all of them Democrats] county council members -- as proponents of "consumer protection."So somehow dissuading a woman from having an abortion is an affront to consumer protection?

The Post staffer went on to quote the regulation's author, Councilwoman Duchy Trachtenberg (D-At Large), who insisted her bill was "just a disclosure regulation." Yet Laris failed to give readers details about Trachtenberg's affiliation with pro-abortion rights lobbies like the National Organization for Women (NOW) and NARAL Pro-Choice America.