The release of internal emails from Britain's University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit shows scientists plotting to ostracize and marginalize other researchers who question their assumptions on anthropogenic global warming. Yet the Washington Post finds that such a strategy is but a natural reaction to attacks on these scientists by climate skeptics.

The Post characterizes the CRU, and the larger circle of scientists pushing the global warming theory, as "an intellectual circle that appears to feel very much under attack." Readers must be forgiven for their confusion about who exactly is being attacked, as the Post goes on to detail CRU communications calling for a boycott of academic journals that publish articles critical of the supposed "consensus" on global warming. (Noel Sheppard reported on these and other incendiary statements in a Friday post.)

"I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report," CRU director Phil Jones wrote of two skeptical academic works. "Kevin and I will keep them out somehow--even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!"

Twelve days ago I noted how the Baltimore Sun failed to mention indicted Mayor Sheila Dixon's Democratic Party affiliation in a story about an embezzlement trial. The mayor stands accused of misappropriating gift cards intended for poor Baltimoreans. Instead of making sure the donated retail gift cards got into the hands of needy folks, Dixon is alleged to have used them for her own personal shopping spree.

Today, with the Dixon jury literally still out, the Sun's Annie Linskey and Julie Bykowicz did mention Dixon's Democratic Party affiliation, albeit in the very last sentence of their November 23 14-paragraph story published in the Metro section of the Washington Post*:

The Library of Congress' new exhibit on Herbert Block (often known as "Herblock") completely avoids labeling the famous cartoonist as a liberal, instead portraying him as an "independent spirit." The retrospective features 81 poster-sized drawings by the late Washington Post artist and never once identifies Block's politics.

The exhibit, which opened on October 13, 2009, and can be found in Washington, D.C., pretends that the cartoonist was a bold truth-teller. Taking in the display on Saturday, I was struck by how often this myth was touted. One section gushed over Block, who worked for the Post from 1946 to his death in 2001, for practicing his art "with fearless independence." Yet, he was really just a liberal journalist, something the exhibits celebrate, even if the L-word isn’t used.

Visitors are told that "Reagan appalled Block in a way that only Joseph McCarthy and Richard Nixon had done before." One cartoon showed Ronald Reagan driving by the homeless, ignoring their plight. (In the comic, the President quipped, "Strange how some choose to live like that, instead of choosing to be rich like us.")

Throughout the history of this country playing the role of a global power, the United States has faced down threats of fascism and communism. The country is now in the throes of a war against terrorism.

However, on ABC's Nov. 22 "This Week with George Stephanopoulos," a panel consisting of Washington Post columnist George Will, Liz Cheney of Keep America Safe, University of California, Berkeley professor Robert Reich and Walter Isaacson is the President and CEO of The Aspen Institute, warned the next ideological battle facing the country is that which China practices - an authoritarian market society or authoritarian capitalism.

"For 37 years, every administration has bet, since Nixon went to China, on a theory, and the theory was that capitalism, market economy, which requires a judicial system to enforce promises, which are called contracts, needs a vast dissemination of information and decision-making that capitalism by its mores and working would subvert the regime, that you could not have an authoritarian market society," Will said. "It's the Starbucks fallacy. It turns out to be a fallacy, that if the Chinese have a choice of coffees, they'll want a -- they'll demand a choice of political candidates. We may be wrong. It could be you can have an authoritarian system."

To say that there's good reason not to be impressed with a quite a few U.S. Senators is to state the obvious.

But I really hope that Dana Milbank either hasn't read or really doesn't remember A Streetcar Named Desire. Because in his coverage of the Senate vote last night to go forward to debate on its health care bill, the alleged journalist stooped well below the level of most of the blogosphere by in essence calling the United States Senate the House of 100 Prostitutes -- and worse.

Yes he did -- in a column the Post put on the top of the front page.

After observing the opportunistic, advantage-taking machinations of Democratic Senators Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas in return for the final two "yes" votes needed for passage, Milbank wrote the following:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Saturday said the Senate shouldn't "focus on a man who has been retired for many years and writes a column once in a while."

This comment was directed at Washington Post columnist David Broder whose article to be published Sunday and already available online was harshly criticial of the healthcare bills in both chambers of Congress.

Given Broder's well-known stance as a left-leaning writer, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) referred to the piece in his opening remarks to Saturday's healthcare legislation debate noting that the Post's "distinguished senior columnist, certainly not a political conservative, expresses his reservation as a citizen about the steps that we could be about to take."

This led Reid to make his disparaging remark moments later (video embedded below the fold, relevant sections at 1:00 and 8:45):

Remember earlier this year when the new era of hope and change was ushered into Washington, D.C. and President Barack Obama made the statement on day one his policies would "represent a clean break from business as usual"?

Not so fast says Charles Krauthammer, columnist for The Washington Post and Fox News regular. Krauthammer on the Nov. 20 broadcast of Fox News "Special Report with Bret Baier" explained that a certain provision put into to the Senate version of health care legislation to favor undecided Democratic senators, specifically Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., represents a different brand of politics from what Obama advertised (emphasis added).

"You asked what [Sen.] Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas will ask for," Krauthammer said. "Well, after watching Louisiana get $100 million in what have some have called 'The Louisiana Purchase,' she ought to ask for $500 million at least. And that's because Obama said he would end business as usual in Washington. If you look at the sections, it is 2006 in which the Louisiana money, it looks as if it is provision for all states which have had a proclamation of a disaster area in the last seven years, and then the fine print inside eliminates all the others except Louisiana. So it's a new kind of business as usual. I think that Steve [Hayes] is right. There is almost no way imaginable that the vote will fail tomorrow. If it is, it is the ultimate humiliation. It's the rejection of the debate even before it starts."

In what could easily be labeled the understatement of the week and probably of the entire month of November, the Washington Post today headlined a page A22 story today "GAO warns stimulus jobs data could contain inaccuracies."

The print story is accompanied by a screenshot of Recovery.gov, which the caption beneath it notes "is the government's stimulus-tracking Web site."

Of course, the biggest inaccuracies recently observed on Recovery.gov are non-existent congressional districts purported to have been "saved or created" jobs thanks to stimulus pork sent their way. Yet Post staffer Ed O'Keefe was careful to keep that juiciest tidbit out of his entire 10-paragraph November 19 story.

As Michelle Groat of Examiner.com noted Wednesday:

On Friday, The Washington Post explored the guilt of the millionaire liberal in a story on the front of the Metro section headlined: "Grappling with a wealth of guilt: Young heirs seek moral balance between inherited windfalls, social responsibilities."

But one subject in Ian Shapira’s story of "moral balance" is working for the Marxists in El Salvador. The caption under his photo read: "Burke Stansbury, who inherited $1 million in stock, works at the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador in the District."

Shapira never explains that CISPES was founded in 1980 to support the Marxist guerrillas of the FMLN, or even that this death-squad-turned-political-party now holds the presidency of that democracy. It’s merely a group "devoted to labor issues," reported the Post:

Last year, Sally Quinn of the Washington Post found it "devastating" on PBS that Barack Obama would abandon his sulfurous religious mentor Jeremiah Wright, a man "lionized by some of the great white theologians in this country." Quinn questioned how Wright’s allegedly racist opponents can call themselves Christians: They "go to their white churches, and you wonder how they can call themselves Christians and still look at other people as though they are inferior."

In her role as the co-creator of the Post’s "On Faith" blog, Quinn is at it again, suggesting on Tuesday Sarah Palin was a rotten Christian in her book Going Rogue. "Palin's book is a screed against everyone who ever done her wrong." She jokes nastily that maybe it was God’s plan for Palin to "go rogue" from the tenets of Christianity:

The Washington Post's Anne Kornblut (saved here in case her report is modified or disappears) captured a comment Obama made to U.S troops at Osan Air Base in South Korea while heading back to Washington after his Asian trip.

I believe that the comment (bolded) could be seen as shining a less than flattering light on the president's mindset:

Obama arrived on the base 3:19 p.m. local time (1 a.m. Eastern Standard Time), and received a rousing welcome from 1,500 troops in camouflage uniforms, many holding cameras or pointing cell phones to snap pictures.

"You guys make a pretty good photo op," the president said.

Does anyone think that a similar comment by Bush 43 would have escaped establishment media criticism? Let's see if this Obamism slides by without criticism.

Earlier in the report, Kornblut noted that Obama's Afghan dither continues:

Three days ago, I argued that the Washington Post was ginning up a new campaign to discredit Republican governor-elect Bob McDonnell, having failed to sink his candidacy  by its continual harping about his culturally conservative graduate's thesis at Pat Robertson's Regent University.

Today the Post confirmed my suspicions as its editorial board officially weighed in, proclaiming Robertson -- who made some controversial statements following the Fort Hood shootings about Islam -- to be "Mr. McDonnell's albatross":

It's unfair to expect politicians to be held accountable for every asinine thing that a supporter happens to say. But in this case -- when the supporter is among Mr. McDonnell's most prominent associates, and the level of support is extremely high -- it's important to know that he is as disgusted by Mr. Robertson's casual bigotry as millions of his constituents are. 

This begs the question how the Post handled the Obama/Rev. Wright controversy. My research indicates the Post was thrilled at Obama's March 2008 non-denunciation denunciation of Wright so much that the next month it all but declared it would never hound Obama ever again for anything stupid Wright should say. Let's look first at the March 19, 2008 "Moment of Truth" editorial (emphases mine):

Headline wording choice can set the tone for liberal bias, and a November 18 Washington Post Style front-pager is a classic example.

Profiling Pentecostal preacher Bishop Harry Jackson, the Post titled staffer Wil Haygood's story "Seeking to put asunder," an obvious allusion to Jesus's declaration about the holy nature of matrimony (Matthew 19:4-6 KJV):

And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made [them] at the beginning made them male and female, And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.

Of course, that scriptural passage succinctly illustrates Jackson's point: Christian doctrine regarding marriage is that "from the beginning" God's design was one man and one woman in a "one flesh" union, but the effect of the headline's allusion is the same. The paper is portraying Jackson as a man who aims to "put asunder" loving, committed gay couples who are "married."

Picking up the Sunday paper on November 15 could make a reader a little airsick – even while standing in the driveway. The Washington Post "news analysis" on the front page carried the headline "9/11 trial could become a parable of right and wrong: Before worldwide audience, both prosecution, defense seek control of narrative."

Does The Washington Post really think that the death and destruction of 9/11 "could" be right, or "could" be wrong?

Liberals cannot stand it when the national media won’t simply declare contentious debates over and their viewpoint settled truth. Take, for example, the allegedly inevitable impending destruction of global warming. It is the left’s position that the media should conclude one side is right and the other wrong. Conservatives should be ignored when they object. But that’s a debate over the future. It’s grotesque for an American newspaper to publish a "news analysis" that stares 9/11 in the face and said it "could" be a matter of right and wrong.

His state voted Democratic in the 2008 presidential contest for the first time in 44 years, he's personally popular with voters, and he's currently the chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Yet not once in her November 17 11-paragraph story did Washington Post's Rosalind Helderman raise the notion that Gov. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) might share blame for his party's gubernatorial candidate Creigh Deeds getting thoroughly trounced in the voting booth 14 days earlier.

Helderman's story, "Democrat Deeds ran without his base, Kaine says," was based on Kaine's recent "meeting with editors and reporters of The Washington Post." Helderman's reporting makes clear, however, that the paper was only interested in dutifully relaying Kaine's spin on the 2009 gubernatorial election, not in challenging any of his claims.

Kaine told the Post that Deeds:

In an unorthodox move, The Washington Post on Tuesday published two book reviews of Sarah Palin's Going Rogue -- one by liberal Ana Marie Cox of Air America radio, and one by conservative Matthew Continetti of the Weekly Standard. Continetti's is genuinely supportive. Cox's is genuinely snarky. (Obviously, it would have been nice if Hillary Clinton had received that treatment, but let's not overlook the balance here.)

There's also a snarky article by Post writer Jason Horowitz and Michael Shear headlined "The Book of Sarah embraces God & Todd."

Inside the Style section, the headline of the Cox review is "Rogue: Mostly flash, little substance. Surprised?" Isn't "mostly flash, little substance" a beautiful summation of the career of Ana Marie Cox? It's like Katie Couric suggesting Palin isn't deep.

Cox slams Rush Limbaugh in her review for calling the book substantive, even as she later confessed she only read part of the book:

Too often "objectivity in journalism" is code for agreeing with the left. The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz demonstrated this sentiment in his profile of Fox News Channel's Shep Smith.

Kurtz lauded Smith as an "outspoken newsman at the network defined by high-decibel conservatives, a stance that has earned him respect even from some Fox-hating liberals."

But was it really his "newsman" status that has earned him this respect, or is it the numerous instances in which Smith has agreed with the left? Kurtz documents a number of such instances, intended to demonstrate Smith's purported objectivity.

It failed to make his master's thesis at the university Pat Robertson founded a campaign killer, but the Washington Post is still intent on finding ways to damage governor-elect Bob McDonnell even before he takes office.

In a Metro-section front-pager today, Post staffer Rosalind Helderman insisted that some recent remarks by Robertson about the nature of Islam following the Fort Hood shooting have "put McDonnell in a bind" and are forcing the Republican governor-elect "to confront how he plans to handle his friendship with" the "long-time ally" and "highly controversial figure."

Just four paragraphs into her story, Helderman cast McDonnell as one who "tried during the race to convince Virginians that he was a social conservative who could speak more broadly to issues that cross party lines."

Of course, McDonnell did just that, winning the Virginia governor's race by an 18-point margin (59-41 over Democrat Creigh Deeds) in a race where the economy, taxes and transportation were the key issues, so it's specious for Helderman to paint the governor-elect as though he were someone of whom moderate voters were skeptical.

CBS News legal analyst Andrew Cohen is a long-time critic of the Bush administration, enhanced interrogation techniques, military tribunals, Gitmo, and many aspects of the government's prosecution of the war on terror. For general background, see Cohen's CBS News blog "Court Watch." It is, therefore, no surprise at all to see Cohen defending the propriety of the upcoming New York City terror trials. 

In his latest article in Washington Post ("A terrorism trial's myths"), Cohen attempts to counter some of the [very legitimate] concerns of those opposed to the idea of criminal trials for the 9/11 terrorists.

Cohen writes:

A Mohammed trial for Sept. 11 crimes -- the case might actually be styled United States v. Mohammed -- could be one of the biggest legal landmarks in American history. It's not surprising that bringing one of the "faces of terror" to within blocks of Ground Zero would generate a lot of fear, trepidation and political hysteria. So let's try to separate sizzle from steak.

J.P. Morgan Chase is the second-largest U.S. bank, but its CEO spoke out on Nov. 13 to condemn the policy of bailing out banks which are "too big to fail."

Jamie Dimon wrote in the Washington Post that even his bank should accept the risk of failure.

"[I]f some unforeseen circumstance should put this firm at risk of collapse, I believe we should be allowed to fail," Dimon said. He argued that rather than limiting the size of banks and financial firms, failure should be a regulatory option.

According to Dimon, regulators should be given "authority to facilitate failures," wipe out shareholders and unsecured creditors, fire management and liquidate assets.

Dimon said this is better than the alternative: "This is challenging but worth doing. The alternatives, neither of which is acceptable, are to perpetuate the politically, economically and ethically bankrupt "too big to fail" idea, or to try to impose artificial limits on the size of U.S. financial institutions."