Weekly Standard

MSNBC Strangely Silent About Racially-Tinged Attack Ads, Fliers Against GOP's Mia Love
By Ken Shepherd | October 2, 2012 | 5:54 PM EDT

As even the casual reader of NewsBusters is well aware, the MSNBC cable news network is forever on the lookout for racially-tinged "code words" in Republican speeches and "dog whistle" ads by GOP super PACs against Democrats. But the network's keen sense of outrage is conspicuously absent when it comes to attacks by Democratic groups against Mia Love, the African-American Republican Mayor of Saratoga Springs, Utah, who is challenging long-time liberal -- he boasts a lifetime American Conservative Union score of 38.61 out of a possible 100 -- Rep. Jim Matheson (D).

Michael Warren of the Weekly Standard reported on Sept. 28 about a Utah State Democratic Committee mailer than seems to have darkened Love's skin tone. Warren also linked to a Blue Dog Democrat-linked Super PAC ad that falsely charged that Love's record is summed up in the words "skyrocketing crime" .

Biden: God! I Love Paul Ryan's Dead Father
By Matt Vespa | August 13, 2012 | 5:16 PM EDT

Joe Biden apparenlty loves Paul Ryan's dead father. 

AP Demotes Unanimity of Supremes' Decision on Religious Workers' Rights in Subsequent Revisions
By Tom Blumer | January 11, 2012 | 5:34 PM EST

We can forgive Pittsburgh Steelers for avoiding the mention of the name of a certain quarterback who plays for the Denver Broncos in the coming days.

Related forgiveness does not extend to Jesse J. Holland at the Associated Press concerning his coverage of the Supreme Court's u-u-u-unanimous ruling today that religious workers cannot sue for job discrimination. As seen here at a Weekly Standard excerpt, the unanimity of the ruling was in the first sentence of the wire service's initial report. Now look how deep it's buried in the 4:10 p.m. version of Holland's report, and how the AP writer attempted to water down the ruling's significance in the interim (bolds are mine):

AP Pair on Frank's Retirement: 'Gay Pioneer' With 'Legislative Triumph'
By Tom Blumer | November 29, 2011 | 2:15 PM EST

Anyone who made the easy prediction that the Associated Press would fail to bring up Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac in its fawning tribute to Barney Frank after his retirement announcement yesterday was correct. Anyone making the easy prediction that the AP would lionize him as a "gay pioneer" was also spot-on.

Also predictably, the wire service's Bob Salsberg and David Espo failed to mention that Frank advocated abolishing Fan and Fred as a dishonest survival tactic during his final reelection campaign in 2010, and of course did nothing visible to make that happen this year. What's really odious in this regard is that the AP pair gave him credit (pun intended) for how he "worked to expand affordable housing," when the Community Reinvestment Act-driven subprime crisis Fan and Fred engendered has sent the housing market levels not seen since World War II. What follows are excerpts from the AP. After that I have a few contrary and clear-headed paragraphs from an Investor's Business Daily editorial, and a little reminder of a 1999 "Present" vote which should have generated controversy, but didn't:

Wesley Smith Notes Pro-Embryonic, Anti-Adult Stem Cell Research Bias in Geron Corp. Story Coverage
By Tom Blumer | November 25, 2011 | 11:52 PM EST

On November 15 (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), I compared how two of the leading wire services, Reuters and the Associated Press, covered the announcement by Geron Corp. of its decision to halt the first government-approved clinical trial involving embryonic stem cells. Reuters fairly noted that "teams working with adult stem cells -- a less ambitious area -- are making good progress." While one could quarrel with the characterization of adult stem cell research as "less ambitious" (unless you throw in cloning, which is what sometimes seems to be embryonic researchers' primary area of intrigue), its "good progress" descriptor was fair. Meanwhile, the Associated Press's coverage of the same story failed to even recognize the existence of adult stem cell research.

Wesley Smith, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute's Center on Human Exceptionalism and an influential prolife author, has observed that the establishment press has largely come down where AP did. A Friday Catholic News Agency item elaborates (bolds are mine):

WaPo, AP and NYT Furiously Spin Panetta's 'You're Here Because of 9/11' Statement to U.S. Soldiers in Iraq
By Tom Blumer | July 13, 2011 | 5:54 PM EDT

He said it, he meant it, and there's no denying it.

On Monday, in a statement carried at the Washington Post, the Associated Press, the New York Times (Page A8 of Tuesday's print edition), and elsewhere, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told U.S. troops at Camp Victory in Baghdad: "The reason you guys are here is because on 9/11 the United States got attacked. And 3,000 Americans — 3,000 not just Americans, 3,000 human beings, innocent human beings — got killed because of al-Qaeda. And we’ve been fighting as a result of that."

That sound you hear is a Democratic Party meme shattering into teeny tiny pieces. The attempts to put Humpty Dumpty together again, both by Panetta himself and the establishment press contingent following him, have been pathetic and ineffectual, which is what happens when one is up against succinctly stated truths.

Liberal Media Want Independence from Exceptionalism
By Matt Philbin | June 29, 2011 | 10:02 AM EDT

"It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more."

-John Adams, July 3rd, 1776

Seems like a lot of fuss over a document written to form a political agreement between some loosely unified colonies more than 200 years ago.

When Adams wrote that, a nation had been created, yes, but it had yet to win any significant victories in its war against the most powerful military in the world. Many states were nearly bankrupt and it wasn't certain they'd hang together. And for all its noble ideas about equality, the Declaration did nothing to end slavery, which Adams called "as offensive in the sight of God as it is derogatory from our own honor or interest of happiness."

Bill Kristol: 'Two Biggest Speculators That Have Damaged The Economy Are Obama and Bernanke'
By Noel Sheppard | April 24, 2011 | 10:15 PM EDT

As oil and gas prices head to new highs, we're hearing more calls from the President and his media minions about how this is all the fault of Wall Street investors.

On "Fox News Sunday," the Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol said the two biggest speculators who have damaged the U.S. economy are President Obama and Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke (video follows with transcript and commentary):

After 18 Years of Conservative Talk, Radio Pioneer Closes Shop
By Lachlan Markay | December 1, 2010 | 11:11 AM EST

Just weeks ago, the radio station that pioneered the tremendously-popular conservative talk radio format announced it was switching to a "classic hits" music station, thus ending a groundbreaking near-20 years of conservative talk.

In 1992, Seattle's 570 KVI picked up a rising radio star by the name of Rush Limbaugh to run a political talk show amidst the station's daily broadcast of 50s hit music. The show became an instant success, and the station proceeded to fill the slots around Rush with other conservative talkers, including Mike Siegel, John Carlson, and Michael Medved.

CNN/Time Poll Predicts Doom for California GOP by Massively Oversampling State Democrats
By Lachlan Markay | September 30, 2010 | 4:22 PM EDT
Should Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina, GOP candidates for Governor and Senate in California, respectively, be worried by recent CNN/Time poll numbers showing both trailing by sizable margins? In short: no, not really.

That's because Time/CNN seem to have stacked the deck by significantly overestimating the number of Democrats likely to vote in this year's strong anti-Obama electorate.

According to the Weekly Standard's Jay Cost, the Time/CNN poll seems to think that Democrats will have more of their voters this year than in their banner 2008 year. Cost examined the Time/CNN numbers, compared them to exit polls from previous elections, and concluded - accurately, I believe - that the poll significantly oversampled Democrats.

Joe Klein's Latest Adventure in Missing the Point: Taking Bill Kristol Out of Context
By Ken Shepherd | August 24, 2010 | 12:33 PM EDT

Time magazine's Joe Klein yesterday did what he does best: take one paragraph from a neoconservative's column and blow it out of proportion and out of context in order to go on an extended screed bashing conservatives in general and neocons in particular.

Writing for his magazine's Swampland blog yesterday, Klein addressed Bill Kristol's editorial for the August 30 Weekly Standard print edition entitled, "He's No Muslim, He's a Progressive."

Klein started off with a backhanded compliment:

Well, it's good to learn that there are limits to Bill Kristol's tactical skeevery. He clearly states here that Barack Obama is not a Muslim. No winks, no nods, no gratuitous McConnellesque "If he says he's not, that's okay with me."

With that out of the way, Klein dove into his screed:

Joseph Epstein Renounces Gray Lady: 'She's Become a Bit...of a Slut'
By Lachlan Markay | August 16, 2010 | 6:59 PM EDT

Correction: A previous version of this post incorrectly identified the author in question as Richard Epstein. The post's author was in fact Joseph Epstein. NewsBusters regrets the error. 

Author Joseph Epstein disowned the New York Times today. "Adios, Gray Lady," he proclaimed at the Weekly Standard's website. "She's become a bit - perhaps more than a bit - of a slut," Epstein claimed, "whoring after youth through pretending to be with-it."

Epstein hysterically decried the Times's ongoing descent into pomposity and cultural irrelevance. And Epstein would know - he claims he's been a subscriber for 50 years.

Chief among Epstein's grievances was the contents of the Times's opinion pages. Though he praised David Brooks, longtime token conservative of the Times's commentators (and by many measures hardly a conservative at all), as not being "locked into a Pavlovian political response," Epstein claimed that "I find no need to read any of the Times's regular columnists."