Shankar Vedantam

On Monday's Morning Edition, NPR science reporter Shankar Vedantam (formerly of The Washington Post) indulged the naughtiest little children, the ones that throw screaming, crying tantrums in public places. The story claimed scientists have now apparently proven that parents should just let the little monsters roar until they exhaust themselves. In the early stages of rage, parents should "do nothing. Don't shout, don't hit, don't try to comfort the child." You can thank NPR the next time this experiment unfolds at the mall."

Vedantam's first subject was little Katrina Doudna: "There was nothing wrong with Katrina. Small kids just have tantrums. Some have lots of them. Tantrums may be traumatic for parents, but they're mostly normal behavior. So science hasn't paid much attention to them, until now."

Tuesday's Washington Post reported that immigration-amnesty advocates are upset that Maryland's Prince George's County is deporting more non-criminals than criminals under the federal government's Secure Communities initiative. Team Obama promised to focus its deportation efforts on criminals. Reporter Shankar Vedantam relayed the concerns of the left (classified only as "immigration rights groups"), but there was no spot in this story for advocates for increased deportations of illegals:

Immigration rights groups say the program has led to the removal of tens of thousands of illegal immigrants who have committed far less serious crimes or none at all.

"The numbers out of Prince George's are absurd," said Gustavo Andrade, organizing director of CASA of Maryland, an immigrant rights group that is active in the county. "Even one family destroyed because of this kind of program makes it unacceptable."  

Liberal Democrats would like to use the lame-duck session of Congress to squeeze out passage of the "DREAM Act" to provide a "path" for citizenship to illegal-alien students. So The Washington Post ordered up another round of sympathetic press-release coverage for Sunday's paper with the tableau of a Thanksgiving dinner, complete with a beautiful "exemplary student" named Anngie Gutierrez who wants to be a medical examiner. The headline was "Undocumented youths chasing a dream." The story used the favored liberal word "undocumented" seven times (including headlines and captions). Reporter Shankar Vedantam relayed:

Gutierrez attended Thanksgiving dinner last week at the home of one of her high school teachers, Elias Vlanton. A group called United We Dream organized 300 to 500 events where DREAM Act-eligible students could share Thanksgiving dinner with citizens - and also perform various acts of service - according to Jose Luis Marantes, a senior organizer at the group.

There they go again. Once more, a liberal print journalist has seen racism behind conservative concerns about Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.). Yesterday, NewsBusters noted a blog post by a Chicago Tribune journalist which claims that Obama’s “supposed patriotism deficit” is because white Americans view African Americans in general as less patriotic.

In a May 5 Washington Post article appearing on page A2, “Department of Human Behavior” writer Shankar Vedantam asserted that it is not Revered Jeremiah Wright’s incendiary comments that have damaged Obama, it is his race, sex and public style. If Wright were a white female who wrote her outlandish ideas in a scholarly journal, Vedantam thinks the effects would not be the same.