Blogs

"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…

My therapist told me to take two shots at Chris Matthews and call him in the morning . . . Mike Barnicle is back to looking down his nose at bloggers.  After Mika Brzezinski claimed on today's Morning Joe that "blogging isn't journalism," the former Boston Globe columnist declared that "95%, 99% of blogging isn't journalism. It's therapy for the blogger."The predicate was a provocative one. …

A group that "celebrate[s] the inherent goodness of adolescent sexuality" and calls for clergy to "speak out against... coercive parental notification and consent for reproductive health services" has just released a study that concludes by calling on American theological seminaries to go over the birds and bees with their students. Yet in reporting on the study by the Religious Institute on…

Virtually all the predictions about the death of old media have assumed a comfortingly long time frame for the end of print . . . But what if the old media dies much more quickly? What if a hurricane comes along and obliterates the dunes entirely? Specifically, what if The New York Times goes out of business—like, this May? It’s certainly plausible.  -- End Times, by Michael Hirschorn, The…

Just how badly do many liberal bloggers want to depict Israelis as heartless killers and Hamas as poor defenseless victims?On Sunday, a more than three year old video of an accidental munitions truck explosion at a Palestinian rally in September 2005 was spread around the liberal blogosphere as footage of an Israeli attack on Gaza on January 3, 2009.Two prominent leftwing websites -- Raw Story…

All in all, I like Politico's list of the Top Ten Media Blunders of 2008, by staff writer Michael Calderone, appearing on the website this evening. How can you be too tough on a list that includes, among other faux pas:MSNBC's use of Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews as election night and convention co-anchors; The New York Times's suggestive but unsubstantiated story about John McCain and…

...who pulled President-elect Obama's books from a Catholic school library? "Hey, at least he didn't burn them!" goes the punchline. Wocka, wocka, wocka!That was Dallas Morning News religion blogger Bruce Tomaso's take on a Missouri Catholic priest's decision to yank Obama's tomes from the shelves of St. John LaLande Catholic School's library (see screencap at right).Tomaso noted that Fr. Ron…

The MSM has been too reverential towards George W. Bush.  Yeah, that's the ticket.  The only thing more absurd than that assertion was Arianna Huffington's willingness to accept it as a fact in answering a question. Here was the exchange between Huffington and Choire Sicha, writing for the LA Times, in today's "Sunday Conversation" feature [emphasis added]:CHOIRE SICHA: It was only recently that…

While the media are fixated on the ire gay activists are directing at the president-elect for selecting Prop 8 proponent Rick Warren to give the invocation at the Obama inaugural, I've noticed little attention given to the fact that the man selected to give the benediction is pretty much the polar opposite of Warren on some key doctrinal matters related to homosexuality.Rev. Joseph Lowery, a…

Barack Obama doesn't mind a fight with gay activists over selecting Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at his inauguration because the President-elect is bound and determined to govern as a centrist.That according to ABCNews.com's Rick Klein as posted to The Note blog (emphases mine):President-elect Barack Obama’s selection of Pastor Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at his inauguration…

It's hardly a secret that Chicago public schools chief executive Arne Duncan was the architect behind a failed plan to open a "gay-friendly" high school in the Windy City. But for some reason Washington Post staffer Maria Glod decided to keep that skeleton in the closet, leaving the fact out completely from her page A3 December 17 story, "Education Pick Is Called 'Down-to-Earth' Leader."Glod set…

Liberal-leaning Chicago Tribune columnist and blogger Eric Zorn is tired of politicians -- Democratic and Republican -- declaring that Gov. Rod Blagojevich's arrest was a "sad day" for Illinois.The sad day, rather, was Wednesday, when Blago returned to work:[I]n statement after statement, our gloomy pols were keening as though a great leader had fallen or an important factory had closed.…