Double Standards

In June 2005, in its Kelo vs. New London decision, the Supreme Court ruled that the City of New London, Connecticut could condemn and take over private property, including that on which Susette Kelo's pink house sat, for a "public purpose" (a redevelopment plan worked up by the city's New London Development Corporation), instead of limiting the Constitution's Fifth Amendment application to "…

On MSNBC's Political Nation Friday evening, host Al Sharpton interviewed Ryan Grim, Washington bureau chief for The Huffington Post.  They spoke about House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH): GRIM: So, you`re right, the record that he is amassing is probably one of the most extreme records that a House Speaker has put up in decades. SHARPTON: Well, based on your last statement, he being probably…

It's no secret that the establishment press continues to serve as a virtual PR mouthpiece for Planned Parenthood. Among the canards employed in its defense is that the organization provides a wondrous array of reproductive health services. Abby Johnson, a former Texas facility director for the organization and others have shown that abortion constitutes 98% of such "services," and that taxpayer…

Rep. Allen West (Fla.), the only Republican member of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), is considering leaving the CBC after a fellow member of the caucus practically compared Tea Party members to lynch mob members. Rep. Andre Carson (D-Ind.) recently told a gathering in Miami that Tea Party members "would love to see us as second-class citizens" and to see blacks "hanging on a tree."…

Using a time-honored establishment press technique, an unbylined Associated Press report out of Indianapolis this evening ("Ind. lawmaker's lynching reference riles tea party;" saved here at my web host for future reference, fair use and discussion purposes) twisted the real news about Congressman Andre Carson's inexcusable, hateful comments at a Congressional Black Caucus-sponsored event in…

New York Times media reporter Jeremy Peters issued a warning to young journalists on Wednesday’s front page, “Covering 2012, Youths on the Bus”: There are partisan bloggers out there who are out to embarrass mainstream journalists. Ironic, given that mainstream journalists have been doing just that to conservative politicians for decades. A group of five fresh-faced reporters from National…

Yesterday on CNN's The Situation Room, the story of President Barack Obama's uncle's arrest on charges of driving under the influence was reported.  Make that Barack Obama's half-uncle, as anchor Wolf Blitzer and correspondent Brian Todd identified him that way at least nine times.  Todd even presented a wall chart detailing "a complicated and very fascinating family tree."  CNN and Blitzer…

Poor President Obama. There's only so much he can do to lift the economy. He's tried so much already, yet somehow it just hasn't worked. Now his options are limited by those darned Republican demands for "fiscal austerity" and a "tight debt ceiling" (of "only" $2.4 trillion) which was only raised by enough to get him through his reelection effort (in 14-1/2 months). This is the utter garbage…

Maybe AP stands for "Alternative Planet." In an early version of Julie Pace's coverage of President Obama's selection of Alan Krueger to be the next head of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, the following paragraph appeared (bolds are mine):

CBS referenced Vice President Joe Biden's recent gaffe about "fully understanding" China's one-child policy on Friday's Early Show as "off-the-cuff remarks" and "interesting comments," but failed to get to it during the segment. Anchor Chris Wragge merely explained that viewers would find "more on that on our website." Oddly, Wragge and his colleagues did broach the subject in an online video…

The New York Times’s outgoing Executive Editor Bill Keller received some pushback on his recently posted column that demanded, in rather insulting fashion, that the media more aggressively question the religious views of the G.O.P. candidates. Times Watch and others noted that his paper was hardly a model of journalistic assertiveness during the spring of 2008, when Barack Obama endured…

I didn't go to the Catholic News Agency's web site tonight looking for a media bias column; I usually go there to find "positivity" posts for my home blog. When I clicked on an item with an intriguing title ("The Pope's Young Army"), I expected that the author, Father Robert Barron, would regale me with inspiring vignettes from the Pope's recently completed World Youth Day in Madrid. Well, at…

Even by the non-standards of the Associated Press, its treatment of the resignation in New Jersey of a state Assembly member is remarkable.  Twice in the space of the wire service's headline and reporter Angela Delli Santi's first three words, Pat Delany was tagged as a Republican, followed during the first two paragraphs by two descriptions of Republican Party reaction (bolds are mine):

Vice President Joe Biden’s defense of China’s one-child policy has yet to be mentioned in the print edition of the New York Times, even though the paper has devoted several stories to Biden’s Asia trip. Edward Wong on Monday quoted Biden’s remarks on human rights from a Q&A session at Sichuan University, but overlooked the vice president's stunning comment on China’s policy of population…