Seeking to make sense of what motivated Dylann Roof to shoot innocent worshipers at a historic black church in Charleston, S.C., to death, MSNBC contributor Eugene Robinson and MSNBC Hardball host Chris Matthews agreed that there was some mystical role that the "atmosphere" of hate in the Palmetto State played. For his part, Matthews likened it to JFK's assassination in November 1963, insisting that although he was a leftist politically, Lee Harvey Oswald was affected by the climate of "right-wing" antipathy towards the president.

In late September, Charlie Baker, the Republican who is the party's gubernatorial candidate in Massachusetts, told female reporter Sharman Sacchetti, who had already asked him a series of questions: "OK, this is going to be the last one, sweetheart."

That was enough to send the press into a tizzy. Jack Coleman at NewsBusters noted how Rachel Maddow at MSNBC turned Baker's statement into proof that the GOP is engaged in a "war on women," even though Baker quickly apologized directly to the reporter and indicated that, as paraphrased by the Associated Press, "the comment was a mistake and doesn't represent his work attitudes." This would be the same Associated Press which has, based on searches, not had a single national or local story on South Carolina Democratic gubernatorial candidate Vincent Sheheen calling incumbent Republicn Nikki Haley a "whore" — even though Sheheen waited four days to (insincerely, in my view) apologize.

One of the biggest concerns journalists have had since the explosion of blogs on the Internet is that people with no training in reporting will post “news” without verifying information obtained from a single person or uncertain sources.

An example of what can go wrong when such a procedure isn't followed was a blog posted on March 29, 2012, by Logan Smith claiming that South Carolina governor Nikki Haley -- considered by many to be one of the GOP's “brightest stars” at the time -- was about to be indicted on tax fraud charges, something that never happened and led to a defamation suit against the blogger, who was later slammed as an “idiot” and a “clown.”

Have liberals already conceded defeat in today's South Carolina special election? Though polls show the race a true toss-up, some Democrats are attacking not just Republicans, but smearing the entire state as well.

During today's Stephanie Miller Show, guest Charlie Pierce of Esquire Magazine slammed the Palmetto State as "tribal", "a cult" and the ultimate dig, "religious"! From the program:

After a decent story by political reporter Jeff Zeleny Tuesday, the New York Times expressed in an op-ed a racially charged, far-left view on the appointment of African-American Republican Rep. Tim Scott to the U.S. Senate: as a "token," the GOP's human equivalent of the racist poll tax and literacy test.

Besides offensively decrying in his op-ed Wednesday the appointment of Scott, the first African-American senator from the South since 1881 and the only black senator in the current Senate, Adolph Reed Jr., University of Pennsylvania professor and contributor to the hard-left Nation, also tackled "the thinly veiled racism" of the Tea Party.