Blogs

Twitter and other social networks have provided social scientists with unprecedented means of measuring human interaction. As it turns out, that fact has implications for the media bias debate. In a study to be released next month, three Duke University researchers rank politicians and other public figures by political ideology as measured by a formula that incorporates whom they follow on…

UPDATE AT END OF POST: Tennessee state assemblyman buys the lie! If you frequent liberal blogs, you were likely under the impression this weekend that Minnesota state Republicans were trying to make it illegal for the poor to carry more than $20 in their pockets or handbags. Fortunately the Left has someone in its ranks interested in exposing lies rather than spreading them:

Leading the free world is highly overrated and so last century. Just ask Time's Joe Klein, who is giddy that our European allies and the Arab League took a leading role in setting up a no-fly zone over Libya, some 31 days after Muammar al-Qadhafi started opening fire upon ragtag rebels. From a March 18 entry entitled "Gaddafi Duck" at the magazine's Swampland blog:

Here is how the Associated Press and reporter Scott Bauer headlined and opened their 10:09 p.m. report (saved here at host for future reference, fair use and discussion purposes) on the Wisconsin Senate's collective bargaining-related vote tonight: Wis. GOP bypasses Dems, cuts collective bargaining   The Wisconsin Senate succeeded in voting Wednesday to strip nearly all collective…

The far-left Fox-haters are at it again. In just the past couple of days, we've seen multiple instances of leftist pundits dishonestly bashing the Fox News Channel in yet more attempts to slime the cable news channel. The latest such attempts caught the attention of cable news blogger Johnny Dollar, who consistently documents the left's growing hatred of everything Fox. The more notable…

Defending their "Shared commitment to women and children," on the Washington Post/Newsweek's "On Faith" site, the Revs. Richard Cizik and Debra Haffner joined forces today support federal tax monies flowing to Planned Parenthood. Cizik, you may recall, is a bit of a media favorite because he hails from a generally theologically conservative tradition but has been moving leftward politically…

Today's Supreme Court ruling in Snyder v. Phelps is proving to be yet another occasion for the media to falsely describe the homosexuality-fixated Westboro Baptist Church as a "fundamentalist" congregation. The Associated Press, MSNBC and NPR.org have been among the news outlets using that tag for the Topeka, Kansas, organization that protests funerals of soliders, celebrating their deaths by…

The hatred of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker continues in the fever swamps of the Daily Kos. The blogger "Patience John" posted an article Wednesday headlined "Walkercide: Killing the American Dream for Corporate Paymasters." Try not to pay attention to the mangled syntax: that "Walkercide" sounds like a plot to kill the governor, not the other way around, or that the headline suggests a plot to…

Earlier today I noted that mainstream media have not been critical of the Obama administration's poor efforts at evacuating American nationals from Libya. Oddly enough it appears the taxpayer-subsidized NPR has. From Bill Chappell's Feb. 24 blog post, "U.S. Struggles to Evacuate Libya; Others Don't":

While the mainstream media finds it tolerable to compare Gov. Scott Walker to Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak, the bloggers at Daily Kos can always stretch the slander further. The blogger "Dengre" finds Walker and his conservative ilk are quite similar to Confederate slave holders: What thing becomes clear--as you consider the modern Republican Confederate Party's effort to attack workers,…

If you had to narrow it down to one person, the mainstream media's favorite evangelical Christian would probably be the politically liberal Richard Cizik. The former National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) vice president resigned from the NAE in December 2008 after having made public statements to the effect that gay marriage and abortion were politically negotiable issues for Christians…

"It's one thing to look a gift horse in the mouth. It's quite another thing to slaughter a gift horse and send its disemboweled corpse back to Washington." That's how Time magazine senior correspondent Michael Grunwald characterized Republican Florida Governor Rick Scott's decision to spurn a federal Department of Transportation high-speed rail grant for the Sunshine State. "This was the…

Yesterday I rebuked Time's Jay Newton-Small for falsely characterizing a bill before South Dakota's state legislature that would make it legal to use lethal force against a person attempting to kill an unborn child in the commission of a crime. "South Dakota is apparently considering legalizing the murder of doctors who perform abortions," Newton-Small complained. Later yesterday afternoon…

The far-left's racially-tinged paranoia and hatred of black conservatives rears its ugly head from time to time, often without the notice let alone disapproval of the liberal mainstream media. Herman Cain is just the latest target. The businessman, radio host, and potential 2012 presidential aspirant was the "minstrel show" entertainment of CPAC 2011, according to Alternet's Chauncey DeVega…