"If Sarah Palin Weren't a Fanatic, I Might Feel Sorry For Her" blares the headline for Bonnie Erbe's June 30 blog post up at USNews.com. Gov. Palin joins blogger Michelle Malkin as a target of Erbe's rather catty disdain.

The PBS "To the Contrary" host and US News contributing editor alerted her readers of her antipathy for the former Republican vice presidential nominee in light of Todd Purdum's drive-by hit piece in Vanity Fair [see NB contributor Mike Sargent's excellent takedown of that here]:

Gov. Palin is a woman on a right-wing mission. She's clearly not ready for prime time. She's easy grist for any journalistic mill. If she weren't such a fanatic, I could feel sorry for her. But since she enjoys killing moose, wolves, and anything else in her rifle sight, I'll pass, thanks.

Erbe generally has been harsh on Palin, but once lauded the Alaska governor for admitting that for a very brief moment she considered aborting her youngest child Trig:

For all the bluster from the Left during the Bush administration about the doctrine of preemptive warfare, it seems at least one journalist favors the doctrine adapted for use within the U.S. justice system to prevent lone-wolf terroristic violence.

U.S. News & World Report contributor and PBS "To the Contrary" host Bonnie Erbe on June 11 sounded a decidedly authoritarian note in a Thomas Jefferson Street blog post in which she called for "rounding up" hatemongers like James von Brunn or Scott Roeder before they turn violent.

Oddly enough, Erbe -- who has always favored Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama  -- seems to suggest that the president's former pastor might be such a killer-in-waiting:

You know the saying, "When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging"? It seems liberal journalist Bonnie Erbe either never heard it, or just doesn't care.

Yesterday I noted how the PBS "To the Contrary" host denounced Playboy writer Guy Cimbalo's list of 10 conservative women he's like to "hate-f***," only to hint that she thought syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin deserved to be degraded by the nudie mag writer.

Today, the U.S. News & World Report contributing editor took to her Thomas Jefferson Street blog to take on conservative blogger Gateway Pundit for supposedly distorting her argument. You see, Erbe insists, she never said she thinks Malkin would have it coming to be raped, only that she has it coming to be viciously and obscenely degraded by some loser writing for a softcore porn mag:

Updated below

It was wrong of Playboy to publish a top ten list of conservative women its writer Guy Cimbalo would like to "hate-f***" but, c'mon, we all know Michelle Malkin had it coming. That's the gist of PBS "To the Contrary" host and U.S. News contributing editor Bonnie Erbe's June 3 blog post, "Playboy Mix of Sex, Hate, and Politics Demeans Conservative Women" (emphasis mine):

Yesterday, I was contacted by the executive director of SmartGirlPolitics.org, a conservative women's website, to stand up for conservative women treated despicably by the media. Here I am, doing just that.... A couple of caveats are in order. First, I probably disagree politically with much of SmartGirlPolitics.org's agenda--I know I disagree completely with the group's position on abortion rights. But as a nonpartisan, I'm also a firm believer in supporting all members of my gender when attacked due to their gender. I am supporting these women herewith.

Abortionist George Tiller's murder is an act of terrorism for which "all pro-life extremists" are to blame, abortion-mongering, taxpayer-subsidized Bonnie Erbe bellows on her U.S. News & World Report blog.

Of course, by "pro-life extremists," the PBS "To the Contrary" host means anyone who has ever called abortion what it is -- the killing of an unborn baby:

Let George Tiller's murder be the last straw. It is time for America's pro-choice majority to stop standing idly by as extreme so-called pro-life advocates murder obstetrician-gynecologists (OB/GYNs) who are providing women with the legal right to terminate pregnancies. I am careful to note I am referring here to EXTREMIST pro-life advocates, people who refer to abortion as "baby-killing" and other inflammatory rhetoric. I am explicitly not referring to mainstreamers who object to abortion due to religious beliefs, but who refrain from using inflammatory speech.

PBS's Bonnie Erbe is annoyed with Barack Obama's rhetoric at Sunday's Notre Dame commencement ceremony. The "To the Contrary" host and U.S. News contributor slammed the president's appeal to find "common ground" between pro-life and pro-choice activists.

"The Left has made great concessions: abandoning any semblance of seeking abortion on demand, acceding to all sorts of limits on abortion rights in the 37 [sic] years since Roe v. Wade became law," Erbe griped in her May 18 blog post, "Liberals Have Made Abortion Concessions, Now Conservatives Must Give Ground Too."

What planet is Erbe living on? Parental consent laws and partial-birth abortion bans have been vigorously contested by abortion rights advocates in courts, albeit with a mixed record of success in having the courts overturn the will of the people in enacting abortion regulations. Can Erbe honestly point to any abortion regulation -- parental consent, parental notification, required ultrasounds, waiting periods, partial-birth abortion bans -- that a major Democratic presidential aspirant has actively pushed for in the past 25 years? 

Who does Michelle Obama think she is being a stay-at-home mom rather than a career woman? A Republican?!

That's the sentiment U.S. News & World Report contributing editor Bonnie Erbe conveys to readers of the magazine's Thomas Jefferson Street blog in back-to-back May 11 posts.

In the first, "Michelle Obama's Mom-In-Chief Image Is a Cave to Politics and Stereotypes," argues that (emphasis mine):

... Mrs. Obama's "Mom-in-Chief" image was created more by Obama image-makers David Axelrod et. al. to soften her into a first lady Americans could love. I think it is a sad state of affairs that Americans are more comfortable with a non-threatening first lady than with a career woman, but it is also a stereotype that screams to be abolished. Michelle Obama is just the person who could have done it, but she decided against it. Instead, she caved into advisors' demands.

The truth is, until that stereotype becomes history, all women will suffer less power and clout in the workplace.

Any measure that we look at shows Al Gore's losing at the moment. The public is just not that concerned.

So said Gallup Poll editor Frank Newport about the Nobel Laureate's campaign to convince Americans that man's carbon dioxide emissions are destroying the planet.

As reported by U.S. News & World Report's Paul Bedard at his Washington Whispers blog Tuesday:

The line of liberal journalists waiting to give the GOP free advice on its future is longer than the queue for Jonas Brothers concert tickets and at least 100 times more petulant than the 'tweens lined up for same.

U.S. News & World Report contributing editor and PBS "To the Contrary" host Bonnie Erbe, for example, has been on a tear in recent weeks. Whether it's hyping Meghan McCain as a fresh voice for the GOP or praising Bristol Palin as more mature than her mother, Erbe has done little to hide her disdain for social conservatives in the Republican Party that can actually form their arguments without coming off like a vapid valley girl whining about, like, creepy old guys like Karl Rove.

Well, in an April 30 Thomas Jefferson Street blog post Erbe urged GOP chairman Michael Steele to abort the Republican Party's coalition with religious conservatives:

US News’s on-staff radical feminist Bonnie Erbe returned to attacking pro-lifers, her favorite subject of ire, in a blog entry on Monday. This time, she singled out “20-something abortion foe” Lila Rose, a junior at UCLA, for her “dishonest” and “pointless” undercover videos which she has taped at several Planned Parenthood locations. She seems to be most upset by how Rose has “created a public relations nightmare” for the abortion-mongering group, and called for the young woman’s prosecution for “trespassing, fraud, and whatever other law she violated” for impersonating a 13-year-old statutory rape victim. The blogger later told pro-lifers to just “go away,” since they will “will never succeed in banning abortion.”

Erbe began by excerpting Robin Abcarian’s fair profile of Rose in the Los Angeles Times on Sunday, introducing her as a “20-something abortion foe who videotapes counseling sessions at Planned Parenthood clinics in which she poses as a 13-year-old impregnated by an older man.” The blogger saw two large “crimes” in this activity -- it has gained Rose quick notoriety in the “netherworld” of the pro-life movement, and it has given Planned Parenthood a few headaches:

Well, that's one vote for Meghan McCain for Republican Party chairman. Too bad it's from a radical feminist columnist and blogger who insists that abortion is a "good decision" in the midst of a recession.

That's right, US News & World Report contributing editor Bonnie Erbe hacked out a short blog yesterday -- appropriately on 4/20, as if to answer the question, "What exactly is she smoking?" -- in which she praises the Daily Beast columnist and daughter of the Arizona Sen. John McCain as the future of the GOP:

Although Meghan McCain can sometimes come off a bit, shall we say, different, she gave a speech at the Log Cabin Republicans meeting this weekend that shows she has a brain and represents the views of lots and lots of young people and young members of the GOP.

[...]

"Dr. Laura Schlessinger is an Elitist, a Hypocrite, and Flat Out Wrong," reads abortion monger Bonnie Erbe's April 10 blog headline.

The PBS "To the Contrary" host and contributing editor to U.S. News & World Report launched into a four-paragraph attack on the author and conservative radio host, and as usual, she not only breathed left-wing fire at a conservative target, she was factually inaccurate (paragraph breaks removed, emphasis mine):

Well, ladies and gentlemen, our favorite abortion-mongering, Pope-bashing, radical feminist is at it again. This time she's caterwauling about how deadly your right to keep and bear arms is. 

Guns do kill people, screams the PBS "To the Contrary" host who denies abortion, well, kills people.

You may stop abortion when you pull the forceps from Bonnie Erbe's cold dead hands, but she thinks that your hands shouldn't be anywhere near "assault weapons."

From her April 6 Thomas Jefferson Street blog post at USNews.com, reacting to a fatal shooting of three police officers in Pittsburgh on Sunday:

The Obama White House is serving as a convenient new employer for members of the media as news outlets downsize, but would they have felt so comfortable coming aboard a GOP President's staff? The latest hires: Three news photographers -- from Time magazine, Cox Newspapers and U.S. News & World Report magazine -- are joining the team of photographers snapping pictures at events and meetings in and around the White House complex.

The chief White House photographer, Pete Souza, “announced the hires to PDN,” DCRTV.com reported Thursday in picking up the item from the week before on the Photo District News site. Souza had already tapped photographers from the McClatchy-Tribune News Service and the Associated Press.

The March 24 PDNonline post, “Time Magazine's Top Photo Editor Exits for White House,” relayed the names of those leaving DC press corps slots for the Obama administration:

Get an abortion.

In her April 1 blog post, Bonnie Erbe, contributing editor to U.S. News and World Report and host of PBS' "To the Contrary," gave that advice to pregnant moms who are wondering how to raise a child on a strained budget.

It wasn't a tasteless April Fool's Day joke. She's serious.

Erbe keyed her argument around the situation of an unwed, pregnant mother of three who walked an hour to a medical center to abort her wanted pregnancy after her boyfriend lost his job. This mother was featured in a March 25 Associated Press article about the increased demand for contraception and abortions in these uncertain economic times. She called the mother's choice "a good decision."

In Erbe's world, it is "sad" the woman had to walk to the center because she didn't have the bus fare, "terrible that her boyfriend lost his job," and "heart-wrenching that she fell to tears in the doctor's office." As for the abortion itself, she wrote:

But in the long run, can we not agree that an unwed couple's decision not to bring a fourth child into the world when they are having trouble feeding themselves and three children is no tragedy? It's actually a fact-based, rational decision that in the end benefits the three children they already have and society as well.

PBS "To the Contrary" host, staunch feminist, and Pope-basher Bonnie Erbe has now taken to preaching vegetarianism on the Thomas Jefferson Street blog at US News & World Report. Fortunately for everyone, Erbe wouldn't dream of joining vegan supermodels in skin-bearing protest. All the same, she threw out this ridiculous claim to Christian readers in a March 27 post:

Even if you believe in the Christian god, there is ample evidence that Jesus Christ was a vegetarian.

Of course, the Bible records that the resurrected Jesus not only ate but on one occasion personally prepared a tasty breakfast of broiled fish for his disciples. Perhaps that's why Erbe hedged her bets by adding:

Just over a week after blasting Pope Benedict XVI as being “horrifically ignorant” on the issue of HIV/AIDS (and thus exposing her own ignorance on the matter), US News & World Report contributor editor and PBS host Bonnie Erbe (at right, courtesy of Zap2it) labeled Catholics who object to President Barack Obama’s upcoming commencement speech at the University of Notre Dame as “closed-minded, atavistic types.” She also wrote in her Friday blog post on US News's website that the Catholic Church was “at its worst when it tries to reinvigorate the Spanish Inquisition and fight against such things as women’s reproductive rights and gay rights.”

Erbe began by expressing her glee at the opportunity to write about this: “The controversy over Notre Dame University’s invitation to President Obama to deliver this year’s commencement address is too tempting for me not to join, so here goes.” Not to nitpick Bonnie, but you got the name of the institution wrong. Notre Dame University is in Lebanon. The Catholic school in South Bend, Indiana is the University of Notre Dame. The difference does matter.

Two March 19 editorials on Obama's failure to create post-partisanship in D.C., both from lefties, can't be farther apart from each other in their conclusions. Marc Dunkelman's in U.S. News blames everyone but Obama for the failure to invent that mythic bipartisan Washington while Mort Kondracke's Real Clear Politics piece lays the fault squarely at Obama's door step.

But, the differences in the two are not just in conclusion but in the journey it took to get there. Sadly, the journey the Dunkelman piece took to get to its conclusion went through Obamamania, into the Obamagobsmacked tunnel, then it took The One turnpike, and ended up parked squarely in Obama's southern port... if you know what I mean? In other words, it was based solely on a sycophantic love affair with the Obammessiah instead of on solid political analysis.

Hell hath no fury like a feminist writer directing a hissy fit at the pope.

Bonnie Erbe -- the US News & World Report contributing editor and PBS "To the Contrary" host who argued that Bristol Palin is more "mature" than her abstinence education-advocating mother -- finds the pope "horrifically ignorant" when it comes to HIV/AIDS.

What exactly did the pontiff say that set Erbe off? Try, "AIDS cannot be overcome by the distribution of condoms," hardly a controversial, implausible statement, but one that, to Erbe, showed the pope has "no sympathy" for women in Africa.

Yet in the midst of her sermon, Erbe showed it was she herself who was woefully misinformed:

[Update: Erbe appears to be factually inaccurate, to say the least. Reader Tim Lindell passed on an L.A. Times article from last year noting that in a 2006 debate, Palin called herself "pro-contraception" and added that "kids who may not hear about it at home should hear about it in other avenues."]

With the writing style and gravitas worthy of a high school newspaper columnist, PBS "To the Contrary" host and US News & World Report columnist Bonnie Erbe slammed Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin in her March 12 column, pitting her against her daughter Bristol who "displays a lot more personal maturity and decision-making ability than her mother" as evidenced by the breaking off of her engagement with boyfriend Levi Johnston.

Although Erbe is not a relationship expert or couples therapist, she plays one on the Internet (emphases mine):

[T]he youthful pair never looked like a loving couple. They looked like what they were: two sexually active teens who happened to "hook up" but had nothing beyond that in common. Besides, who wants to marry the son of a woman who's brought up on drug charges?

[...]

Bonnie Erbe, a columnist and blogger for U.S.News and World Report, is keen to make sure that Democrats continue to cheat on re-districting as much as possible. She is insisting that Democrats not fall for a bi-partisan or a fair approach to re-districting and says that the Census should stay "politicized" because, after all, it’s Democrats in power now! So, as far as she is concerned, the Democrats should "gerrymander away" and absolutely demands that the Census should be politicized.

Erbe writes that she wants to "gender-mander" the Census for "feminist leaders" and wants to make sure that "hispanics and Latinos" aren't "under-counted." She claims the Census is "part of the spoils of victory" and wants her lefties to be able to wield that power. She says that the Democrats should "spare us the theatrics of trying to look nonpartisan." So, the Dems should continue to cynically use the Census merely for partisan political purposes.

So much for the new tone in Washington, eh?

Taxpayer-subsidized journalist Bonnie Erbe has some advice for Democrats: use the 2010 Census and subsequent redistricting to your maximum advantage to gerrymander and "gender-mander" the Congress chock full of left-wing constituencies.

Writes the PBS "To the Contrary" host on a March 3 post at her Jefferson Street blog at US News & World Report (emphasis mine):

Depoliticize the Census? Surely they jest! Taking politics out of the Census is like taking milk out of the cow or coal out of Newcastle or diamonds out of Tiffany. Politics is the lifeblood of the Census—without politics, there is no Census.

The Census is part of the spoils of victory for whichever party controls the White House at the turn of each decade. Gerrymandering—using Census data to create voting districts that artificially lean toward one end of the political spectrum or the other—is as uniquely an American tradition as Thanksgiving. The thought of trying to depoliticize the census is, well, decidedly un-American.

One has to wonder about the thought process of some people. Dan Gilgoff, Faith reporter with U.S. News and World Report and Huffington Post writer, is a perfect example of what I am talking about. After a February 23 posting on Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal's Catholic faith, Gilgoff followed up the next day with a post claiming that Sarah Palin fans were smearing Jindal over his supposedly "secret Muslim" faith. Where did Gilgoff get such a ridiculous idea? Why, from just two commenters that posted on his entry of the 23rd, that's where.

That's right, just two people claiming in the comments section of his U.S. News post that Jindal was a secret Muslim was enough for Dan Gilgoff to decide that Sarah Palin's entire support base is smearing Bobby Jindal as a secret Muslim. Just two people. Two nuts is enough for U.S. News and World Report to slander Sarah Palin and all her followers as crazy, racist, hatemongers.

If the right to an abortion is really about about a woman's choice, then it logically follows that a fully-informed choice is a proper concern for public policy makers on the state level.

But don't tell that to pro-choice liberal journalist Bonnie Erbe. The US News & World Report contributing editor unleashed her fury at "Antiabortion Fanatics' New Invasive Attack: The Forced Ultrasound" in a February 12 blog post.

Oozing contempt from every pore, the PBS "To the Contrary" host slammed as "fanatics" conservative lawmakers in 11 states who "are considering bills that would offer or require ultrasounds before a woman gets an abortion."

Erbe insisted she was not mad at "average, conservative, pro-life voters," but those average joes are the very folks who elect the state legislators considering these laws. Indeed, it is often "average" pro-life conservatives who run for and win state legislative seats only to face fierce, well-organized and well-financed opposition to abortion reduction measures by radical pro-choice lobbies.

"Lying" about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, holding detainees at Gitmo, and prosecuting the saintly matron of all things domestic, Martha Stewart. Those are just three reasons taxpayer-financed journalist Bonnie Erbe finds for filing criminal charges on outgoing President George W. Bush and his dastardly underlings.

The PBS "To the Contrary" host and U.S. News and World Report contributor shared her thoughts in a January 13 entry on her Thomas Jefferson Street blog:

I understand the politics of letting bygones be bygones. But Bush has so thoroughly destroyed this country and encouraged such heretofore unimaginable abuses of office (lying about weapons of mass destruction to lead the country into an unnecessary war; the firings and politicization of the attorneys general; the prosecution of active Democrat Martha Stewart for relatively minor stock abuses while permitting subprime lenders and GOP donors to swindle billions from the economy; the abuses at Guantánamo; and the list goes on and on and on) that to act as if this never happened is to encourage future abuse.

Bush's behavior, and that of his subordinates, should be punished so future presidents and their appointees will not feel free to mimic it with impunity.

But wait, there's more.

Is that? [sniff] No, couldn't be. [sniff][sniff] Yup, I thought I smelled paranoid liberal.

Taxpayer-financed journalist Bonnie Erbe smells a rat, namely the plurality of men in a recent poll who dared declare Caroline Kennedy unfit for serving in the U.S. Senate. From the PBS "To the Contrary" host's December 31 blog post at US News & World Report:

No one should feign surprise at a new poll showing women more supportive of Caroline Kennedy's bid to replace Hillary Clinton as New York's junior U.S. senator. But what is interesting about this poll is why men are less likely to support her:

Fifty-seven percent of the women taking part in the new CNN-Opinion Research Corp. Poll said that Kennedy is qualified to be a senator from New York. But only 47 percent of men agreed.

...

You can just see the scene from the Wizard of Oz, where the wizard says ‘Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.'

When it comes to diverting attention from a scandal plagued home state, don't worry Senator Obama, USA Today has your back.

In a bizarre demonstration of spinning numbers with the sole purpose of getting people to look away from the recent Blagojevich scandal, John Fritze and others at USA Today took statistics from the Department of Justice and the U.S. Census Bureau, crunched them in the liberal media calculator, and decided they had proof that North Dakota is actually the most corrupt state in the nation. 

Frank Rich has apparently figured out that after January 20, it's not going to be as much fun for him.  True, the Times columnist will surely disinter W as necessary to explain away Obama's missteps. But the buck for whatever post-inauguration problems the country faces will land ever more resoundingly on the new president's desk.

And so, like a vaudevillian tapping as fast as he can while anticipating the hook, Rich seems determined to spend these last few weeks of the Bush administration dancing on GOP graves and luxuriating in Republicans' perceived pain.  You might say Frank is making hatred while the sun shines.

As we discussed last week in Have Fun For Now, Frank, Rich's immediate post-election column was one long poke in the Republican eye.  The Timester is back at it again this morning, outdoing himself in sheer vitriol as he pour buckets of salt, generously seasoned with schadenfreude, into Republican wounds.

Annotated excerpts from The Moose Stops Here:

Days after U.S. News & World Report's Bonnie Erbe declared "when one thinks of voter fraud, one usually associates it with the GOP," she predicted "the McCain campaign could go down as the most corrupt and inept in history."

Writing at her blog at the News's website Thursday, Erbe joined the rest of the mainstream media's attacks on Joe the Plumber, the Ohio man who recently challenged Barack Obama about his socialist tax plan.

As she cited far-left leaning websites including Daily Kos, Erbe sought to make the case that Joe is a Republican plant (emphasis added):

Hey, did you know that "when one thinks of voter fraud, one usually associates it with the GOP?" That's what U.S. News's Bonnie Erbe's lead-in is in her online article today picked up by CBS news online. (NOTE: I initially indicated Erbe wrote for CBS. CBS actually picked up Erbe's US News article. I regret the error. -- DS Hube.) In an otherwise balanced story regarding Barack Obama's ties to the group ACORN, Erbe really thinks she's speaking for the "everyman" in her absurd first paragraph:

Hate to say it, but when one thinks of voter fraud, one usually associates it with the GOP, the 2000 election, and the debate over who won Florida. You remember, voting machines that didn't work, long lines to vote in predominantly Democratic districts, and recounts that weren't accurate.

Do you first think of the GOP engaging in voter fraud in Florida back in 2000 when that very term -- "voter fraud" -- is raised? Or, is it largely a ... [mainstream] media creation?