Apparently, if one calls an Arab-American an A** H*le, Reuters and the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee want all Americans to know that this is to be considered a "violent hate crime." At least that is what it seems when looking over the very lose and sloppy definition of "violent hate crimes" in a recent story on the falling numbers of such crimes against Arab-Americans in the U.S.

While ostensibly a good story -- discrimination against Arab-Americans has decreased -- it is still odd that Reuters allows this Muslim advocacy group to define even name calling as a "hate crime" and "violent" at that. So many levels of behavior are categorized under the rubric "hate crime" here that it really makes a mockery of the term, if one is even disposed to accept such a term in the first place.

At first glance, it's hard to figure out who is the bigger buffoon:

• Is it Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, for suggesting that Arizona Governor and Obama Homeland Security Secretary-Designate Janet Napolitano is perfect for her presumptive position because she's single and can therefore "have no life"?
• Or is it CNN's Campbell Brown, for criticizing Rendell's sexism and bias against employees who don't have families -- after Brown herself suggested in September that Sarah Palin shouldn't have accepted John McCain's vice-presidential nomination because of her daughter's pregnancy?

Here are excerpts from the program transcript (video here), including Rendell's howler, and Brown's subsequent hypocritical editorializing (HT Tall Cotton):

Against the odds, GOP candidates in the state of Tennessee experienced a historic win. In addition to delivering the state to John McCain, Republicans won both chambers of the state legislature. And, as the Wall Street Journal reported, "Sen. Lamar Alexander became the first Republican to carry all but one county in his re-election win -- even taking a quarter of Tennessee's black votes."

NPR was not so generous to Republicans in its reportage.

Given the opportunity to traffic in the 'Republicans as racists' trope or do some honest journalism, well, with NPR involved, you can probably guess which way this story went.

Some think that Harry Reid must live a charmed life.

After all, he asserted last year that the Iraq War "is lost." Now it looks like victory, at least to seasoned on-the-ground observers like Michael Yon.

He has fretted over how fossil fuels like coal make us sick. Never mind that life expectancy, largely, uh, fueled by industrialization and its accompanying higher living standards, continues to climb.

In each case, the consequences to Reid's political career have apparently been minimal.

Now Reid has said that visitors to the Capitol -- everyday American citizens like you and me -- stink, and that he's glad to get away from them.

Really (HT Michelle Malkin; last paragraph bolded by me; CNS News also has coverage):

A criminal without legal status deported by US immigration officials is the subject of the latest pity party thrown by The New York Times. The Times seems to find it lamentable that this gang member and armed robber was deported from "his homeland" -- that would be the USA -- to Cambodia, the land of his birth (one he left when he was a 3-year-old). Why does the NYTimes bemoan the deportation of this thug? Why would he make a fine American despite his criminal history? He can dance, man!

The Times waxed maudlin that their friend "K.K." was deported at 26-years of age ending up in Cambodia, a land with which he was quite unfamiliar. Apparently, the Times feels "K.K." is doing wonderful work there, though, by teaching Cambodian street kids how to street dance. Yes, despite that he is a "former gang member" and convicted felon, the Times thinks he's a swell fellow because he is bringing "a little slice of Long Beach, Calif." to street kids in Cambodia.

How can you tell that the news from Iraq about American casualties continues to be good? You barely hear about it.

It would be better to report no deaths, of course. But according to icasualities.org, 17 US soldiers died in Iraq during November. Only seven of those deaths were the result of hostile enemy action, tying an all-time low:

And here's another "surprise," considering how we were told during the presidential campaign that the situation in Afghanistan was deteriorating: Combined November coalition deaths from all causes in Afghanistan and Iraq were the lowest in over 4-1/2 years, and the two-month total is by far the lowest ever:

If Britney Spears wants to launch her grand return with a trite and tacky rough-sex pantomime, I suppose that's her business.  She's not known as a pop tart for nothing. What I do find noteworthy is the way GMA celebrated that bit of rough stuff, featuring it in its opening minutes. Even there, it's not ABC's descent into schlock that jumps out so much as the double standard.  Can you imagine the dutifully feminist ABC applauding such junk if the gender tables had been turned?  Me neither.

Diane Sawyer, uh, teased things during the show opening.

In her story about pardon applications submitted to the Bush Justice Department before the President leaves office, the Associated Press's Lara Jakes Jordan made it seem as if pardon applicants appealing directly to the president is a new thing, and whitewashed the last-minute flurry of pardons granted by Bill Clinton in 2001.

Here are the key passages from Jordan's story:

Some high-profile convicts past and present are among more than 2,000 people asking President George W. Bush to pardon them or commute their prison sentences before he leaves office.

Junk-bond king Michael Milken, media mogul Conrad Black and American-born Taliban soldier John Walker Lindh have applied to the Justice Department seeking official forgiveness.

But with Bush's term ending Jan. 20, some lawyers are lobbying the White House directly to pardon their clients. That raises the possibility that the president could excuse scores of people, including some who have not been charged, to protect them from future accusations, such as former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales or star baseball pitcher Roger Clemens.

This particular Palin report is funny for it's cluelessness, but a spokesman for the Internet search engine company Lycos is astounded that people are still interested enough in Governor Sarah Palin to put her name in the search field of an Internet search engine like Lycos or Google. After all, we have Obama, now, the spokesman says. Why do we need Palin info still?

The quotes from Kathy O’Reilly, a spokeswoman for Lycos, were reported by Politico last week and goes to show that the appeal of Sarah Palin is still little understood in many quarters.

Sarah Palin has stayed in the list of the top 5 Internet searches since she was chosen as John McCain's running mate in October.

Note to Chris Matthews: when mocking someone for using a ghostwriter, it's best to avoid doing so on a day when Hillary Clinton is prominently in the news . . .

On this evening's Hardball, Matthews went out of his way to mock Joe The Plumber for his use of a ghostwriter on his just-released book.  This on the day Hillary Clinton was in the headlines, having been named Barack Obama's Secretary of State.  You know, Hillary Clinton.  The woman famous, in writing "It Takes A Village," for failing to credit her . . . ghostwriter.

A multitude of organizations, hundreds of thousands of individuals join together to defend the First Amendment from a reinstatement of the so-called "Fairness" Doctrine

Editor's Note: You too can join the Free Speech Alliance.  Click here and sign the petition, and stand at the ready for whenever any liberal again threatens the First Amendment with talk of reinstating the Censorship Doctrine.   

Spreading the Word

The Media Research Center today officially announced the Free Speech Alliance, a gathering of a multitude of organizations and hundreds of thousands of individual citizens dedicated to ensuring that the Censorship Doctrine, mis-named the "Fairness" Doctrine, is never again reinstated.

The Free Speech Alliance member organizations are themselves engaged in a wide array of issues, but they all recognize the preeminent importance of defending the First Amendment and protecting free speech from government censorship, a fundamental Constitutional safeguard.

The Free Speech Alliance member organizations thus far:

Birmingham, Alabama Mayor Larry Langford has been arrested.

His party is not mentioned in the story at AL.com.

Langford is Democrat (even Wikipedia took a while before naming his party).

Here are key paragraphs from the story:

CNN is warning Americans that already making Barack Obama into one of America's greatest "heroes" may not be a good idea. Despite the fact that Barack Obama has yet to take office, despite that he has yet to really do anything to earn that status, CNN is saying that "already, he's being compared to the most remarkable leaders."

It might make one amazed that now, after cheerleading for him for the last four years, CNN suddenly finds that calling Obama a hero is not necessarily the best idea. "The Americans who are comparing him to those remarkable predecessors," CNN warns, "are putting a lot of faith in a man they barely know."

And why do we "barely know" Barack Obama, CNN? Is it perhaps because the American media never took the time to vet this man? Is it because all we've gotten is hero worship from the media?

It seems that Froma Harrop of Creator's Syndicate news service was on vacation from just about five days before the general election until today and she's just catching up on all the Palin hatin' she must have missed. Unfortunately for Harrop, she still hasn't caught up with the truth yet because her latest is filled with every lie about Governor Palin she could jam into one column, quite despite that for weeks her digs have been proven lies.

In hers headlined, "Palin should move to TV talk show," Harrop proves that she should move from Creator’s Syndiacte to the National Enquirer... unless Creator's Syndicate is trying to unseat the supermarket tabloid in hack writing. If that is the case, then Harrop is on the right track.

It reads like the lyrics of the song in West Side Story where the "Jets" gang members sing to Officer Krupke claiming they are just misunderstood kids, not punks and criminals. The Minneapolis Star Tribune takes this approach to the story of young male Somali refugees that have taken residence in Minneapolis who have decided to go back to Somalia to "visit." The suspicion is, though, that are they going back to join terrorist gangs there. The Star Trib claims they absolutely are not in its coverage, however. Yet, for some unexplained reason, the Star Trib also leaves out the fact that Somali recruiters have been seen roaming the streets of Minneapolis encouraging Somali men to return for just that purpose, as well as other important details linking the “visits” with terrorism.

Why would the Star Trib leave out such important facts in the story?

Here we go again.

It has been 19 months since Mona Charen and yours truly obliterated the legitimacy of the basic premise of the "Food Stamp Challenges" that began popping in various parts of the USA last year. The false premise is that the USDA's calculated benefit for recipients is all they have to buy food.

It has been over a year since Colorado couple Ari and Jennifer Armstrong proved they could live even on the artificially low "Challenge" amount (which at the time was $21 per person per week).

Nonetheless, Maggie Thurber at Thurber's Thoughts tells us that the bogus "Challenge" is back in Ohio's Lucas County, home of Toledo.

Maggie notes that this time the "Challengers" are throwing in a new wrinkle (second bold is mine):