Washington Post Supreme Court correspondent Robert Barnes gave readers of today's Washington Post an imbalanced, biased story regarding the Supreme Court's intervening to permit Ohio to reduce its early voting plan by one week. Early voting will now commence 28 days out from the November election, October 7, rather than today, September 30.
While the print edition headline was fairly straightforward, "Ohio may cut early voting," the digital edition headline was full of loaded language: "Supreme Court rules 5-4 for Republican plan to limit early voting in Ohio."
After suggesting that the new Ohio law would infringe on African-American political participation because it "cuts back on Sunday voting, which studies have shown is used disproportionately by minorities," Barnes made sure to note the high court was "split... along ideological and partisan lines" with "the four liberal justices, all appointed by Democratic presidents" saying "the court should not have intervened in the case."
Yet Barnes failed to inform readers that the federal District Court judge who struck down Ohio's new voting law, Peter C. Economus, is a Clinton appointee. Likewise he failed to note that the three-judge Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals panel which had upheld Economus's ruling was comprised of two Clinton appointees (Judges Eric Clay and Karen Nelson Moore) and one Carter appointee (Senior Judge Damon J. Keith).
The implication one gets from such an omission, of course, is that the judgment of conservative jurists on the Supreme Court is to held held in suspicion while that of liberal jurists both on the Supreme Court and in lower levels of the judiciary is to be taken at face value and upheld as according to justice.
