Crime

Here's a particularly noteworthy "Name That Party" follow-up.In a February post ("AP’s ‘Name That Party’ Twist: Disgraced PA Judges’ Dem Party ID Disappears After Initial Inclusion"; at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), I noted that the Associated Press had originally identified the party of two Democratic judges involved in a shocking scheme that pushed thousands of juvenile offenders into detention…

Cambridge Police Officer Sgt. Leon Lashley, the African-American cop who was with James Crowley during Crowley's arrest of Henry Louis Gates last week, is learning the hard way that no good deed goes unpunished -- especially one that involves speaking out in support of a fellow officer who happens to be white.He's also learning that the wretches who write headlines for the Associated Press can…

Extending the auspices of NBC News to provide some damage control help to President Obama's damage control-inspired meeting at the White House with Henry Louis Gates and the police sergeant who arrested him -- so Obama can repair the mess he made in taking sides and insulting the police -- Brian Williams on Tuesday night didn't mention any gaffe by Obama and instead innocuously described how the…

The networks might just as well have hung out a sign this morning: non-African-American experts on policing and racial profiling need not apply.  Good Morning America, the Early Show and Today had a total of six guests on the subject . . . and every one was African-American.Among the highlights: a writer from Tina Brown's Daily Beast suggested that given our incarceration rate, the USA meets the…

Watching Associated Press reports evolve, or as is all too often the case, devolve, can be a revealing exercise.Example: What happened between 8 p.m. Friday and 8 a.m. Saturday that would have caused the Associated Press and writer Nancy Benac to water down the headline and opening paragraphs of their story about the Obama-Gates-Crowley situation from this ........ to this? (after the jump)

Someone at the Associated Press got a headline mostly right ("Obama rushes to quell racial uproar he helped fire") -- although you still have to wonder if it had been almost anyone else, if something along the lines of "xxxx stops short of full apology" would have been used instead.AP writer Nancy Benac's story does note a couple of clear negatives in Barack Obama's behavior in the Henry Gates…

The New York Times takes sides in its Friday front-page story on Harvard professor (and Obama friend) Henry Louis Gates's confrontation with Cambridge police sergeant James Crowley, "Case Recalls Tightrope Blacks Walk With Police -- A Professor's Arrest Tests Opinions on Racial Progress." Gates was arrested outside his home in Cambridge, Mass. for disorderly conduct on July 16 after Sergeant…

Owning an semiautomatic AK-47, much less giving them away free with the purchase of a pickup truck, seems just "a tad irresponsible" to Carol Costello. The CNN anchor, who said she grew up with guns in her house as a teenager, tacked to the left on gun rights in her interview with Kansas City auto dealer Mark Muller, who is giving away vouchers for the Russian-made rifles with the purchase of a…

Somebody at the Columbus Dispatch has a bit of explaining to do.You see, Ohio Governor's former Director of Community and Faith-Based Initiatives, one Robert "Eric" McFadden, after "years" of not getting caught, pleaded guilty last Thursday of two felonies for trying to market the "services" of a 17 year-old prostitute. Yes, a 17 year-old.In his original report late Thursday morning on McFadden's…

Where's the party (identification)?On Thursday, Chicago-based New York Times reporter Monica Davey reported on more controversy over Rod Blagojevich, the corrupt former Democratic governor of Illinois who tried to sell off the state's U.S. Senate seat that was left empty after Sen. Barack Obama assumed the presidency. In "Top Blagojevich Aide Pleads Guilty to Fraud," Davey managed to totally…

The New York State Senate, it appears, has reached an all-time low.One might possibly overlook the legislative wrangling, the blatant power-playing, the use of thuggery to enforce a particular party’s control over the Senate.  One might also overlook the unbelievable childish behavior of the Senate, in which even New York Governor Patterson, owner of the lowest approval rating of any governor in…

ABC’s Diane Sawyer acted more concerned than the reporter on the scene on Monday’s Good Morning America over a small town in South Carolina arming itself against a serial killer. She asked the local sheriff, “The community has apparently been arming up and we’re reading that ammunition is selling out at some of the stores. How concerned are you that people are standing at their doorways with guns…

The San Francisco Chronicle is proving the old bromide true. That's the one that goes: "a lie can be half way 'round the world before the truth can pull its boots on" (often incorrectly attributed to Mark Twain). Then there is another one Twain didn't originate but aptly fits here, "there are three kinds of lies: Lies, damned lies and statistics." The subject of this scoffing is that factoid the…

Apart from several reports on FNC, and a few on CNN, the mainstream television news media have ignored the controversial firing of former Inspector General Gerald Walpin, who had recently battled for tougher penalties against Obama friend and Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson after an investigation by Walpin found Johnson had misused hundreds of thousands of tax dollars granted by the AmeriCorps…