Major Newspapers

About a week ago, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown suggested in a UK Telegraph column that allowing hospitals to harvest organs from dead patients without their prior consent or their families' post-mortem consent might be a good idea. Mr. Brown's occasion for bringing up the topic was telling, and perhaps explains why Brown's proposal got very little coverage in the US:This year will be the…

This isn't The Onion; it's for real (HT Hot Air; bold after title is mine):Sun, Jan. 13, 2008Burke named executive director of ACLU in TexasTerri Burke, former editor of the Abilene Reporter-News, has been named executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas.Burke, 56, will begin work at the ACLU of Texas on Tuesday. Her duties will include lobbying, fundraising, administering…

Paul Krugman clearly isn't lacking in chutzpah. His January 11, 2008 New York Times column ("The Comeback Continent"; HT Tom Maguire via Instapundit) is yet another in a seemingly endless series of attempts by economic statists to convince people in the US that we need to be more like Europe -- specifically Western Europe -- and less like the growth-driven, market-based capitalists that we still…

Rush Limbaugh called out Old Media for playing favorites in the GOP presidential race. He was, as usual, dead-on correct. Audio is at Hot Air. The transcript, which will remain available at Limbaugh's site until next Friday, is here. Here is the first portion of what he had to say (bold is mine):

The Treasury Department released its Monthly Treasury Statement for December this afternoon. Though Uncle Sam did run a surplus last month, the year-to-date figures are alarming: It should be pretty clear that the big news in the above figures is that federal spending during the first quarter of the fiscal year was almost 9% higher than during the first quarter a year ago. If the spending…

USA Today's Emily Bazar wrote a long article Wednesday ("Strict immigration law rattles Okla. businesses") on the early impact of Oklahoma's recently-passed immigration reform legislation, apparently now well-known as "1804," or "House Bill 1804, the Oklahoma Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act of 2007, arguably the nation's toughest state law targeting illegal immigrants," which became effective…

I've said this before, but it merits saying again: We'll know that the news we're fed every day by the wire services, "newspapers of record," and TV networks is fair, accurate, and complete when those in search of the full picture no longer have to go to the editorials of the Wall Street Journal and Investors Business Daily to fill in Old Media's yawning information and coverage gaps. Among the…

NationalJournal.com has news (HT Instapundit) about the reality of the October 2006 Lancet report on civilian deaths in Iraq -- a report that was breathlessly and gullibly cited at the time by Old Media outlets and reporters (including David Brown here at the Washington Post). Here is background for those unfamiliar with the original story: Published by The Lancet, a venerable British medical…

Two years ago, Old Media, particularly the New York Times, and quite a few chronic sufferers of Bush Derangement Syndrome (but I repeat myself), attempted to hijack the Sago Mine tragedy in West Virginia before the wakes for the 12 dead miners were even held. They wanted to pin the catastrophe, totally without foundation, on the idea that the administration had created the conditions for the…

The Associated Press's Mark Sherman, as noted by Jim Taranto at Best of the Web, "reports on a pending Supreme Court case in a way that seems to give both sides their due, but in substance does not." Here are the first three paragraphs of Sherman's report (bolds are mine): The dispute over Indiana's voter ID law that is headed to the Supreme Court in January is as much a partisan political drama…

A subscription-only editorial in the Wall Street Journal on Monday propagated a carefully-worded whopper, but at least made a small change to the paper's insufferable 23-year "There Shall Be Open Borders" mantra (bolds are mine): A recent paper by the Immigration Policy Center, an advocacy group, notes that "Numerous studies by independent researchers and government commissions over the past 100…

Erick at Red State reports that USA Today reporter Jill Lawrence distorted what she reported Saturday on a statement made by Fred Thompson to a Burlington, Iowa audience. Here, per Erick, is how Thompson actually responded to the question, "Do you want to be President?" -- The first place, I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t. I wouldn’t be doing this. I grew up in very modest circumstances. I left…

A hard-hitting subscription-only editorial in the Wall Street Journal today needs some reinforcement. That's because Californians relying on Old Media for their news about the Golden State's dire financial situation are being conditioned to believe that only a tax increase will solve the state's problems. The latest offering in that regard is a Field poll covered at the San Jose Mercury News and…

Does the New York Times let bias creep into its post-Christmas reports on the shopping season just completed? Smart-aleck answer: Is Maureen Dowd obsessed with Dick Cheney? (His name appears in 295 of her columns, all but four appearing during the last seven-plus years. That would be almost 40 Cheney inclusions per year, probably close to half the number of columns she has written during that…