New Hampshire

MSNBC Hypes Republican Push for Voter Registration Reform as 'War on Voting'
By Ken Shepherd | March 8, 2011 | 1:36 PM EST

"With such a strong bloc of these young people voting Democratic [in presidential elections], Republican leaders in some key swing states are looking to even the playing field coming up in 2012," MSNBC's Thomas Roberts insisted as he introduced Heather Smith of Rock the Vote (RTV) in a segment devoted to that group's fears about "voter suppression" -- see RTV screen capture below the page break -- in states such as New Hampshire, Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Missouri.

Those are four states where Republicans control both houses of the state legislature and are pushing reform laws aimed at voter ID requirements, tightening up residency requirements that largely impact college kids, and/or repealing last-minute voter registration at the polls.

WaPo Worries Republicans 'Seek[ing] More Limits on Voters'
By Ken Shepherd | March 7, 2011 | 5:00 PM EST

"State Republicans seek more limits on voters" warned the front page Washington Post headline for Peter Wallsten's March 7 article.

"GOP says the push targets fraud; Democrats call it a power play," added the subheader. The online version of the article had a decidedly less-loaded headline, but Wallsten's article skewed towards the Democratic complaint (emphasis mine):

WaPo Front Page Suggests Conservatives Have Fangs, While Reagan's Shooter Strums Love Songs
By Tim Graham | April 26, 2010 | 11:07 AM EDT

It would sound odd to say the Washington Post is harsher on Tea Party activists than they are on the man who shot Ronald Reagan. But that's what happened on Monday's front page. Shailagh Murray's article on former Congressman Charlie Bass moving to the right, endorsing the Tea Parties, and saying "their agenda is exactly the same as mine," painted conservatives this way:

But for a career politician who served on Capitol Hill for a dozen years, addressing serious policy questions with people who profess to hold zero faith in the federal government can get awkward. Bass's challenge is to recraft his image in a way that will defang his conservative Republican opponents yet stay true enough to his centrist self to win back the crucial independent voters who defected to his Democratic opponent in 2006.

Conservative Republicans have "fangs"? You can't constructively "address serious policy questions" in their presence? Right next to that story, Annys Shin writes about Reagan-shooter John Hinckley and his "steps toward freedom" away from his charmed life at St. Elizabeth's Hospital: "He fills his free time strumming on his guitar, crafting pop songs about ideal love, or going on supervised jaunts to the beach or the bowling alley."

Family Told Obama NOT To Wear Soldier Son's Bracelet... Where is Media?
By Warner Todd Huston | September 28, 2008 | 3:53 AM EDT

**UPDATE - 09/28/08 PM**

Barack Obama played the "me too" game during the Friday debates on September 26 after Senator John McCain mentioned that he was wearing a bracelet with the name of Cpl. Matthew Stanley, a resident of New Hampshire and a soldier that lost his life in Iraq in 2006. Obama said that he too had a bracelet. After fumbling and straining to remember the name, he revealed that his had the name of Sergeant Ryan David Jopek of Merrill, Wisconsin.

Shockingly, however, Madison resident Brian Jopek, the father of Ryan Jopek, the young soldier who tragically lost his life to a roadside bomb in 2006, recently said on a Wisconsin Public Radio show that his family had asked Barack Obama to stop wearing the bracelet with his son's name on it. Yet Obama continues to do so despite the wishes of the family.

NH Paper: Celebrating 'Open Tent' Day -- Kids Dress Like Arabs
By Warner Todd Huston | May 31, 2008 | 4:46 PM EDT

Only in the west can one see a school that hosts a day when school children are encouraged to dress like, act like, and "learn about" those trying to kill them and all in a day that the country is in the midst of war. And only in the west would the media help celebrate such an outrageous example of support for what, in truth, are our enemies.

On May 9, the kids of the Amherst Middle School in Amherst, New Hampshire, were forced to parade about their school dressed as "Saudi Arabians" so that they could "learn from people around the world" in a happy day of multiculturalism. But, what they ended up being taught was the wholly sanitized version of how wonderful Saudi society is instead of the truth.

Sadly, the Milford (NH) Cabinet, a small newspaper group in the Granite State, is full of uncritical praise and wonder at the multicultural extravaganza forced upon these children unawares. Worse, they didn't do any reporting on how this day of appeasement came to be held.

New Media Darling: New Hampshire Press Helps Fuel Obama's Surge
By Rich Noyes | January 7, 2008 | 5:07 PM EST
It’s not just the national media that’s got the ear of New Hampshire voters in the days before their first-in-the-nation primary tomorrow. Local newspapers are filled with stories about the various candidates, and The Concord Monitor (which reaches about 20,000 weekday readers in and around the state’s capital city) has had a spate of stories favorable to Barack Obama since Thursday’s Iowa caucuses.

What makes that all the more interesting is that the generally liberal newspaper endorsed Hillary Clinton back on December 30, saying the former First Lady “has the right experience, the right agenda and the know-how to lead the country back to respect on the world stage and meaningful progress on long-neglected problems.”

But since the caucuses, more than a few pro-Obama pieces have found their way into the paper. On January 4, for example, the Monitor ran a long story headlined “Speaking of faith, Obama does; Senator bucks party trend to reach out.” The first couple of paragraphs will give you the flavor:
CNN Asks Huckabee Day's Daffiest Question
By Mark Finkelstein | December 24, 2007 | 5:46 PM EST
I'm calling this the Day's Daffiest Question Award. Suzanne Malveaux, come on up and accept it on behalf of CNN. You asked the question, after all.

Malveaux was interviewing Mike Huckabee this afternoon and talk turned to a tough editorial a New Hampshire paper had written about Mitt Romney.
SUZANNE MALVEAUX: Saturday, New Hampshire's Concord Monitor broke with tradition. They're not endorsing someone, but they certainly took a slap at your opponent, calling him "a phony that must be stopped." Do you think that they went too far?

View video here.

Clinton Immediately Touted as 'Presidential' in Hostage Situation
By Jason Aslinger | December 1, 2007 | 11:01 AM EST

We had a little campaign drama yesterday as a disturbed man (who claimed he had a bomb) took hostages in the Rochester, New Hampshire, headquarters of the Hillary Clinton campaign. Over a period of several hours, all of the hostages were released. And eventually the hostage-taker, Lee Eisenberg, surrendered without incident (but not before calling CNN ... maybe he had a debate question?).When the incident began, Hillary Clinton was in the Washington area.

UPI, NH Dem Pull Disappearing Acts
By Vivian Lee | November 27, 2007 | 7:28 AM EST
Abracadabra seems to be the magic word - at least for one New Hampshire Democrat and United Press International (UPI).

Prosecutors in Strafford County are claiming in court papers that former congressional candidate, Gary Dodds (D-NH) staged his own car accident and faked his disappearance in 2006 in order to garner sympathy and support for his weak campaign.

In that same disappearing Dodds spirit, UPI made the vanishing politician's party affiliation disappear. Voila!

NH Paper Lets John Edwards Promise the World
By Matthew Sheffield | October 29, 2007 | 4:01 PM EDT

The John Edwards presidential campaign couldn't have asked for a more flattering article than the one printed Friday by New Hampshire's Concord Monitor.

In an interview with the paper's Lauren Dorgan, Edwards promised universal health care, universal pre-kindergarten, matched savings accounts for poor people, and a new iniative called "College for Everyone." All of these new programs are going to require significant amounts of tax money in order to be paid for.

Instead of asking Edwards where he would get the money to pay for his massive spending increases, Dorgan and her Monitor colleages let Edwards off the hook with a spin that he's only asking America to "sacrifice." Here's an excerpt:

Woman Says She Confronted Hillary on Broaddrick in N.H., Was Led Out by Secret Service
By Tim Graham | July 16, 2007 | 12:16 PM EDT

In December of 1999, Katherine Prudhomme created an uncomfortable moment for Al Gore in New Hampshire, one the liberal media never would have dreamed of creating: she asked him about Juanita Broaddick's claim that Bill Clinton raped her in 1978 at a Little Rock hotel. The video from WNDS-TV showed Gore claiming he never watched the Broaddrick interview, and he had no opinion on it. Embarrassing.