Maryland

The media may be busy trying to reelect Barack Obama, but it's never too early for them to start grooming the 2016 field. Look no further than the Washington Post, for example.

"O'Malley to set ambitious agenda," read the teaser headline posted this morning at the  Post's website. "Watch the Maryland governor deliver his sixth State of the State address now," read the caption beneath a photo showing Democratic Gov. Martin O'Malley in front of two American flags. A few hours later, following the speech, an updated teaser headline reading "Gov. O'Malley calls for 'tough choices'" takes readers to an article about O'Malley's February 1 speech in which the Democratic Governors Association (DGA) chief "urged Maryland lawmakers to act on gay marriage, tax hikes."

Does anyone have a dollar to lend the Washington Post? It needs to buy a clue, apparently, as it sees "legal immigrants" as the "Unlikely foes of Md. Dream Act," an in-state tuition bill for illegal immigrants that voters may toss out next November in a ballot initiative.

Here's how Post staffer Pamela Constable opened her November 28 story:

"Gay marriage" advocates are probably delighted, but The Washington Post once again can't find any place to put a troublesome "D" next to the name of a Maryland state delegate charged with theft. Aaron Davis reported:

A young Prince George's [County] politician who seemed to embody Maryland's crisis of conscience over approving same-sex marriage was charged Friday with stealing campaign funds, in part to pay for her wedding.

Poynter Institute's Jim Romenesko wrote yesterday about how the editor of the Annapolis Capital sought to apologize to readers for a gauzy article about a lesbian couple that ran on Mother's Day.

Only his colleagues in the newsroom pressured him not to publish it, at least not in his original draft form:

 

Yesterday liberal Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley (D) signed into law a measure allowing illegal immigrants to pay in-state tuition rates at public colleges and universities.

Covering the story today, the Washington Post offered this bland print edition headline on page B1: "O'Malley signs bill allowing immigrant tuition breaks."

The move "bucks trend in other states" and a "showdown with opponents is expected," subsequent subheadings trumpeted.

Yet staff writer Ann Marimow waited until paragraph 16 in her 23-paragraph article to get around to quoting one such opponent:

The closing of Borders book stores isn’t that newsworthy, but The Washington Post on Monday somehow turned it into a celebration of how liberal books sell well (and conservative titles don’t) in blue Maryland. Reporters Larissa Roso and Michael Rosenwald began at a store at Rockville’s White Flint Mall:

Many shoppers, such as Francie Kranzberg, went straight for the political stuff: a copy of "Blowing Smoke: Why the Right Keeps Serving Up Whack-Job Fantasies About the Plot to Euthanize Grandma, Outlaw Christmas, and Turn Junior into a Raging Homosexual," by Michael Wolraich. "I’m looking for Keith Olbermann’s book, too," she said.

At the White Flint store, there were enough copies of Jonah Goldberg’s "Proud to Be Right" to supply at least a dozen book clubs. But there was only one copy of Walter Mondale’s autobiography, "The Good Fight: A Life in Liberal Politics."

On February 24, Washington Post reporter John Wagner sympathetically covered leading Maryland Democrats (and Catholics) for crossing their hierarchy to lobby for "gay marriage" -- without seeming to contact this hierarchy. So when Wagner sympathetically profiled House Speaker Michael Busch -- again -- at the top of the April 11 Style section, the primary question was: How was this "news," a full month after the gay lobby failed to pass it? The headline was "A matter of conscience: Speaker Mike Busch found a new perspective for Maryland's same-sex marriage bill." It was considered an awakening of conscience that Speaker Busch wept:

Busch, whose hunched 6-foot-1 frame still bears witness to the standout running back he was at Temple University, retreated to his office at the side of the House chamber. He apologized for the bill’s failure to a few of its leading supporters. They thanked him for his efforts. And then another unusual event happened: With them, he cried.

Presenting the same-sex marriage debate in Maryland's state legislature as one about "marriage equality," openly gay MSNBC host Thomas Roberts discussed the matter with Washington Post editorial writer Jonathan Capehart, who is also openly gay.

The segment, entitled "Cold Feet In Maryland?" aired today at 11:17 a.m. EST.

"Supporters of Marriage Equality Wavering on Bill" the lower-thirds caption read as Capehart described how supporters of same-sex marriage are a few votes shy of passing the bill in Maryland's House of Delegates. A similar bill has already passed the Democrat-dominated Maryland Senate and Gov. Martin O'Malley (D) has pledged his signature should the bill reach his desk.

In Maryland, Prince George's County's top elected official, County Executive Jack B. Johnson (pictured at right on NB's home page) was arrested yesterday, and "is accused of accepting cash in return for helping a developer secure federal funding."

Johnson's wife, a recently elected councilperson, was also arrested yesterday. The couple are both accused of "tampering with a witness and evidence relating to the commission of a federal offense, and destruction, alteration, and falsification of records in a federal investigation."

The linked article at Gazette.net does not identify the Johnsons' political party affiliation. When this failure to identify occurs, it typically means that the politicians involved are Democrats. As expected, the Johnson are indeed Dems (Jack; Leslie).

Sadly, it is not at all surprising that there is a virtual blackout on the Johnsons' party affiliation:

In my beloved home state of Maryland, this year's governor's race is a rematch of the contest four years ago, and most polls show a close race, with current Gov. Martin O'Malley (D) up a few points over former Gov. Bob Ehrlich (R), but at or below the crucial 50 percent mark.

Enter the Washington Post, which two days ago released a poll that shows O'Malley up by 11 points, breaking the 50 percent mark. As might be expected, Post journalists are hyping the results, casting the race as possibly starting to break decisively in O'Malley's direction.

In an online chat, the Post's Chris Cillizza vouched for the poll by stating that  pollster "Jon Cohen is the best in the business, so yes," O'Malley has indeed opened up a wide lead over Ehrlich. Today, the Post's Mike DeBonis penned a column about how O'Malley is "right now, in a place where a lot of his fellow Democrats around the country sure wish they were."

Eh, not so fast, veteran Maryland political observer Blair Lee argues in an October 1 article for Gazette.net.

The Post poll oversamples demographic groups that are O'Malley-friendly and doesn't take into account the heightened energy among Maryland Republicans and depressed primary turnout from Democrats this year, Lee argues (emphasis mine):

An openly gay city council candidate is targeted by malicious campaign literature suggesting he may be a pedophile and subsequently loses his bid for alderman.

It's the type of story highlighting bigotry and homophobia that the mainstream media would love to trumpet and it happened just days ago in the 2009 city elections in Annapolis, Md.

Unfortunately for Scott Bowling, he's a Republican in the liberal capital city of Maryland.

Aside from coverage in the Annapolis Capital and the Baltimore Sun's Maryland Politics blog, a Google News search and Nexis searches of the AP wire, major newspapers, and network transcripts revealed no coverage of the story in the mainstream media:

From a breaking news e-mail by The Politico.:

ACORN has filed a lawsuit in Maryland against James O’Keefe, Hannah Giles and the Web site Breitbart.com for secretly videotaping the organization’s employees at its Baltimore office.

Remember all those TV segments and magazine articles that had a list of 10 things you can do to save the planet from the perils of global warming? More likely than not, one of things you were urged to do was to switch all you incandescent light bulbs to compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs).

And, if you didn't heed their advice, the government's forcing you to through the legislative process. Congress banned the incandescent light bulbs in the energy bill signed into law by former President George W. Bush on Dec. 19, 2007. The bill increases efficiency standards and effectively bans traditional bulbs by 2014.

However, a segment by Washington, D.C. CBS affiliated WUSA on March 30 reported these CFLs were responsible for a fire at the home of Rick Jenkins, a resident of Cumberland, Md.

On Thursday’s Countdown show on MSNBC, New York Times columnist Frank Rich charged that it looks "morally bad" and "idiotic" that Republicans have not elected a black candidate to federal office in six years. The Republican party also seemed to remind Rich of South Africa’s racist Apartheid policy of the past: "The fact is, this isn`t South Africa 25 years ago, this is a major political party that is essentially all white. And the hierarchy of it is definitely white. There hasn`t been a new black Republican elected to federal office, I think, in six years. And so, what does that tell us about the party? And how does that look to voters? I think it looks like it`s the party of the last century. It looks bad. Not only is it morally bad, but politically. I think it`s idiotic because it`s against the whole demographics of this country and where they’re going."

If you break the terms of a contract, you should be expected to pay a penalty, right? Not according to ABC's "Good Morning America."

"Good Morning America" criticized fees charged to customers who return rental cars without a full tank of gas - part of a standard car rental agreement.

"The only thing more expensive than gassing up your car these days is not gassing up your rental car," reporter Elisabeth Leamy explained to viewers on August 29. She said companies across the nation charge as much as $8 per gallon for cars returned unfilled.

Charm City has had Republican mayors before, but the last one was Theodore McKeldin, in the mid-1960s. His immediate successor was none other than Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (D-Calif.) father, Thomas D'Alesandro III, so for native Marylanders like myself, it's easy to take for granted that the mayor of Baltimore is and ever will be a Democrat, and that mentioning the fact is redundant.

But the national news media have an obligation to clue in readers about such things are party affiliation, and that's where, surprise, surprise, the Associated Press falls flat in its coverage of the recent raid of Mayor Sheila Dixon's private residence.

But the missing (D) is not the only problem with the June 18 article by Ben Nuckols, who laments that Dixon's "successes" will be overshadowed by such a minor inconvenience as her alleged abuse of power (emphasis mine):

BALTIMORE - Sheila Dixon has reduced violent crime and gracefully handled a variety of crises since taking over as mayor in January 2007, but a two-year state investigation of her financial dealings as City Council president threatens to overshadow her successes.

The Daily Record in Baltimore, Maryland recently published a story by Brendan Kearney that oddly seems to present a conflict between a bank employing Islamic Shari'ah law with its American investments and some black American borrowers and painting it as a racist issue. Sadly, the real story, that of Islamic law being imposed on American investors, is sidelined in order to pursue the race card. (Full story reprinted at BlackEnterprise.com)

As The Record reports, a black couple in Baltimore -- I identify their race because it is pivotal to how The Daily Record reports the story -- had contracted with the Church's Chicken restaurant chain to open a new outlet in Baltimore. Unfortunately for the entrepreneurial couple, as they were investing in their chicken outlet, Church's Chicken was purchased by Crescent Capital Investments Inc., the US affiliate of the Bahrain-based First Islamic Investment Bank BSC. And, upon the restaurant chain's purchase, these new Islamic corporate owners decided to institute Shari'ah laws upon their investments.

This caught the Beasleys new restaurant in a tough spot because pork products were on the morning breakfast menu for the Church's Chicken chain. Because Shari'ah law principles had been imposed on the Beasleys' new restaurant, they would be barred from serving their breakfast menu items, their corporate owners informed them. This barring from being able to serve their breakfast items, the couple maintains, contributed to the restaurant's failure and their eventual bankruptcy.

The Washington Post carried the usual double standard on political ethics – highlight the party affiliation of the Republican, bury the party affiliation of the Democrat – all in one edition of the paper on Saturday. In the Metro section (page B-5), the headline proclaimed: "GOP’s McKee Resigns After Home Is Searched" (for child pornography). On the front page of Style (page C-1), a story on Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick’s adultery and lying was headlined, "In Detroit, Not Exactly LOL LOL! His Steamy Text Messages Turn Up the Heat on Motown’s Young Mayor."

You don’t see this every day. In a fierce Maryland fight for a majority-black seat in Congress, Rep. Al Wynn’s campaign filed a complaint against Donna Edwards, the leftist challenger that he barely beat in the last election cycle. The Washington Post reported he said in a conference call with reporters: "There seems to be a vast, dare I say, left-wing conspiracy designed to circumvent campaign finance laws." Wynn is being challenged as too conservative, even though he has a lifetime American Conservative Union rating of 9.9 percent.

Edwards (the candidate the Post noted was supported in the cold by actor Danny Glover) is on leave as executive director of the Arca Foundation, a hard-left philanthropy. Its newest focus is on media groups – including $50,000 to Media Matters for America to monitor religious broadcasting (think Pat Robertson on "The 700 Club.")

Liberal Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley (D) is in trouble with the voters who elected nearly 15 months ago. In a state that is deep blue in presidential elections and has a 2:1 Democratic registration advantage, the former local Irish rocker is getting a chorus of boos from voters with poll numbers in the mid to high 30s. One major factor: the tax-hiking special legislative session he called in fall 2007.

Not to worry, Governor, the Washington Post has got your back. Here's the headline for the top Metro section story in my January 23 Maryland Home Edition of the Post:

"On O'Malley's To-Do List: Rebuild Public Image"

It becomes apparent, however, that rebuilding O'Malley's positive press is high on the Post's agenda. Reporter John Wagner wrote of O'Malley's plan to take "modest steps" towards fulfilling what O'Malley insists is "protecting our priorities." Wagner takes care to focus on how a slowing economy could prove an obstacle to O'Malley's policy goals, but fails to address concerns that O'Malley's tax hikes could be part of compounding the problem by disincentivizing business from expanding or moving to the state:

*Update/Correction (15:28 | January 11): Grasmick has donated to Republicans running for statewide office (OpenSecrets tracks only federal contributions), as Mark Newgent of the RedMaryland blog notes, yet all told her state and federal contributions to the GOP are quite smaller than that of those to the Democratic Party. See Newgent's item here.

The January 10 Baltimore Sun, reporting on an escalating personnel struggle in Annapolis, dutifully noted liberal Gov. Martin O'Malley's (D) charge that state school superintendent Nancy Grasmick is a "pawn" of the GOP. Grasmick has served under three governors, two Democrats (Govs. Schaefer and Glendening), and Republican Robert Ehrlich.

Yet completely missing from reporter Liz Bowie's article was any mention of Grasmick's historic political ties to Democrats. Indeed, 30 seconds in an online would yield campaign contribution data showing Grasmick has only given money to Democrats.

According to OpenSecrets.org, in the past seven years Grasmick has given money to incumbent Democratic congressmen or congressional candidates such as Elijah Cummings, Dutch Ruppersburger, and John Sarbanes. Grasmick also gave $500 to the state Democratic Party in 1999, the first year of liberal Gov. Glendening's second term. Not once during her tenure was a contribution to a Republican* listed.

For more NB articles on Sun bias, check here.

Yesterday I noted that the Washington Post's John Wagner virtually cheered Gov. Martin O'Malley (D) and the Democratic Maryland General Assembly for its recently-concluded, tax-hiking special legislative session. Well today the hosannas migrated from the front page to the editorial one. The closing paragraphs are rather telling (emphasis mine):

Politically, Mr. O'Malley will have more than higher taxes to show for his gamble. The new revenue will not only close the deficit, it will also help to clean up the Chesapeake Bay, extend health-care coverage to 100,000 lower-income Marylanders, build public schools, and add facilities for state colleges and universities. In addition, and critically, the governor secured about $420 million in fresh annual revenue for transportation, the biggest infusion of new money in 15 years...

[...]

Facing a budget shortfall due in large part to overspending in years past, Gov. Martin O'Malley called a special session of the Maryland General Assembly to consider a package of tax hikes and a referendum on legalizing slot machines. Now that the freshman Democratic governor has proven successful in pushing through both, the Washington Post congratulated O'Malley with a front page article replete with pats on the back and attaboys from O'Malley's fellow Democrats. The icing on the cake: a signing ceremony photograph (shown above*) of O'Malley that appears to show him pumping his fist in victory.

Staff writer John Wagner opened his November 20 article with triumphal language that painted O'Malley as a respected statesman:

Stand aside, Sherlock Holmes: the inquisitive Conservative Belle is at it again. After catching David Shuster out over his inquisition of Rep. Marsha Blackburn, the blogging belle trained her sights on Media Matters's fundraising practices. And now, a response she has received from an investigator at the Maryland Secretary of State's office, and reproduced in her blog of today, strongly suggests that Media Matters is in violation of the state's laws on soliciting contributions.

CB, as we like to call her, had initially raised the question in this post of October 6th. Media Matters has been sending out emails containing links to its fundaising page. This would clearly seem to constitute a solicitation. Yet as per CB's digging, Media Matters had not complied with all the registration requirements in Maryland, and under the state's law, would be prohibited from soliciting in the state.

To test her theory, she sent an email to the Maryland Secretary of State's Office, and today received this reply:

In a September 18 entry on the Washington Post's Maryland Moment blog, two of the paper's writers spend most of their digital ink criticizing Tuesday's Maryland Court of Appeals ruling upholding the state’s marriage law.

Even the opening sentence reflects the Post’s bias, describing Maryland’s marriage law as “the state’s ban on gay marriage” and “the controversial law.”

For starters, the marriage law is not controversial, at least outside homosexual activist circles. All 50 states have laws defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman (even Massachusetts, which has no business issuing same-sex marriage licenses without a change in the law). What is controversial is the lower court ruling in January by Baltimore Circuit Court Judge M. Brooke Murdock striking the law down.And what about the Post describing Maryland’s marriage law as “the state’s ban on gay marriage?”

I know, it's a dog-bites-man story, but I thought I'd pass along that longtime White House correspondent and left-wing columnist Helen Thomas addressed the College Democrats at the University of Maryland on Wednesday evening.

I live close to the campus, but unfortunately found out about the event after the fact and hence was unable to drop in and take in my own observations. Fortunately Maryland's student paper The Diamondback covered the event. Unfortunately the reporter covering the assignment failed to press Thomas on her commanding respect as a journalist while forsaking any attempt to objectively report news from her perch at the White House. In fact reporter Chidima Okaparanta labeled Thomas's abrasive technique as a "straight-shooting reporting style, especially regarding the war in Iraq."

Below are some excerpts with portions in bold reflecting my emphasis:

As an MRC study has proven, liberal broadcast media has a strong record of skewed coverage of illegal immigration. Print coverage in major metropolitan broadsheets in no different. In her August 30 article, Washington Post staff writer Pamela Constable featured English-speaking illegal immigrants lamenting "hateful talk against immigrants."

"Many have no legal documents," Constable conceded of the day laborers waiting at 5:30 a.m. outside a Gaithersburg, Md., work center operated by "the nonprofit CASA de Maryland." Constable failed to note anywhere in her article the pro-illegal immigration, pro-amnesty stance CASA consistently promotes.

Indeed, Constable's mission was not to report both sides of the immigration debate, but rather to paint a stark, emotional account full of loaded language, including comparing the plight of illegal immigrants to Jews hiding from Nazi persecution:

The Baltimore Sun is hardly a right-wing rag, in fact its editorials and its overall news judgment, as many a Marylander registered on this site can tell you, is rabidly left-wing. But even the Sun, reporting on yesterday's heinous, grisly discovery of four murdered stillborn infants in Ocean City, Md., used the term "baby" to describe the victims. The Associated Press also used the term "baby" to describe the pre-born or stillborn victims.

So what's holding Andrea Stone of USA Today back? The word "baby" appeared twice in her July 31 story, but only in quotes, from a police spokesman and the Worcester County State's Attorney. Likewise the term "infant" was only used once in Stone's story, again within quotes from a police report.

Also to the Sun's credit--although really it should be standard practice when the MSM report on abortion matters-- Sun reporter Lynn Anderson avoided the left-wing euphemism "woman's right to choose" in favor of a grammatically correct phrase that includes the word "abortion." In this excerpt, Anderson is describing the law under which suspect Christy Freeman may be prosecuted:

He's a "burly man" with "rhetorical punch" from Catholic, blue collar roots in Baltimore who trekked a "remarkable rise" to become "one of Maryland's most powerful public officials." But today former state senator Thomas Bromwell (D-Md.) finds himself facing a judge and entering a guilty plea in a federal racketeering case that's been years in the marking. Reporting the story, the Washington Post's Philip Rucker calls Bromwell's saga "one of the state's largest public corruption investigations in years." Yet nowhere in Rucker's Metro section front pager "Bromwell Says He Accepts His Fate," is any mention of the politician's party affiliation, Democratic.

Liberal tolerance is a wonderful thing. Of course, with tolerance like this, I'd hate to see what an intolerant liberal looks like.

Up in the Baltimore area where our friend Ian Schwartz of Hot Air lives, someone defaced a billboard of radio host Rush Limbaugh. Instead of condemning the act of vandalism, Robert Murrow, a spokesman for the city, said it "did my heart good."

Apparently, somebody in Baltimore isn't a fan of Rush Limbaugh. A large billboard advertising local air times for the conservative radio talk-show host has been defaced.

Robert Murrow, a spokesman for the city's Department of Public Works, saw the vandalism as he drove to work this morning on I-83 near the Guilford Avenue exit. He called The Sun, saying that someone had poured paint on the image of Limbaugh's face.