***ADDED: Something else the Blaze didn’t bother to share was this.

You have to wonder what’s going on with Glenn Beck.

Beck’s fall from grace started when his site, The Blaze, falsely attacked James O’Keefe — to the delight of the very people who used to attack Beck. Then Beck, of all things, betrayed the Tea Party in the worst way any conservative could. I thought he’d hit bottom with that. After all, how much lower can you go than selling out to the mainstream media?

Well, yesterday, what I thought had been a rhetorical question was answered when The Blaze went full Andrew Sullivan, full Politico, full Wonkette, and and attacked Sarah Palin over a situation involving her family. 

The Governor’s sin? Composing what amounts to a touching article about her family’s life with Trig – Todd and Sarah Palin’s youngest son with Down Syndrome.

To understand how misleading the Blaze attack is, you first have to read what Beck’s writer, a piece of work named Eddie Scarry (more on him below), wrote:

What’s the first thing that came to mind when you heard that Rick Santorum‘s special needs child was in the hospital with pneumonia late last month? I bet all of Mitt Romney‘s money it wasn’t Sarah Palin unless you are Sarah Palin. …

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Right off the bat C-SPAN should have aired this hearing. There is absolutely no excuse not to air it on TV. Since I had to stream it online I kept my TV on DirecTV News Mix to keep an eye on the news. The only network that had consistent coverage of the testimony was FOX News. I’m not shocked at all. I didn’t see anything about the testimony on the other channels. Jeff Poor from The Daily Caller helped me keep an eye on MSNBC and he didn’t see anything. He said they were hung up on Donald Trump all day. I was informed by a friend on Twitter, Doug Mataconis, that the hearing was discussed on The Situation Room on CNN for about 15 minutes. “Special Report” and The FOX Report both started off with Mr. Holder’s testimony.

Before I continue I noticed some friends on Twitter growing upset that headlines were partisan. The MSM was right: This was a partisan fight and every single Democrat coddled Mr. Holder. The Republicans were the only ones to demand withheld documents and answers from Mr. Holder.

Right after the testimony ended I began searching for coverage of the hearing on Google. First stop was Associated Press. Remember: If the AP doesn’t write anything on Fast & Furious more than likely the rest of the media won’t mention it. Pete Yost did write about the testimony, but hat’s where the excitement ends. Again, he distorts information to favor Mr. Holder and the Department of Justice. Mr. Yost fails to mention the subpoena was issued October 12, 2011. That’s 4 months ago. That is plenty of time to go through the hoops to release the documents. Mr. Yost says, “Though neither side said so, negotiations are almost certain to be the next step.” If you watched the testimony do you honestly think Mr. Issa or Mr. Holder will negotiate? Didn’t think so. Mr. Issa won’t accept anything less than the documents he needs. Then Mr. Yost describes a few dialogues, but doesn’t bother to get down to nitty gritty of the testimony.

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Give Ryan Grim of the Huffington Post credit: it takes courage to change one’s mind, and to admit an earlier mistake.

Grim has written that he was wrong to dismiss a November 2011 report by 60 Minutes (based on Breitbart editor Peter Schweitzer’s book, Throw Them All Out) on insider trading in Congress:

At the time, I wrongly reported that 60 Minutes’ poor choice of targets for its report, and its clumsy attempt to connect specific trading to specific legislative action, set momentum for the bill back. Instead, in fact, the report propelled the legislation forward.

Grim had initially reported that the 60 Minutes report “falls short.”

What has changed his view is not the merits of the argument against insider trading–which Grim acknowledged at the time as “a serious problem in Washington”–but the fate of the legislation, which President Barack Obama suddenly supported during his State of the Union address last night:

Much of the left and the left media–including the Huffington Post, Politico, and Media Matters for America–dismissed the issue of insider trading and tried to discredit both the allegations and their source. Now that Obama has taken up the legislation–with its sponsor, Senator Scott Brown (R-MA) obtaining Obama’s explicit commitment to make Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid move it through the Senate–the left is scrambling to catch up.

Grim’s (honest) change of heart is likely the beginning of a broader and less principled shift, in which the left will attempt, in Orwellian fashion, to rewrite the history of its opposition to the Schweizer book, the 60 Minutes report, and congressional legislation on insider trading.

Big Brother says insider trading in Congress is wrong; therefore it has always been wrong. (more…)

With the publication of Peter Schweizer’s best-selling book Throw Them All Out, Media Matters for America embarked on a scorched-earth campaign in an attempt to undermine both Schweizer and his book, while dismissing the topic of insider trading in Congress.

Bet they’d like to have that one back.

Here’s just a taste of their relentless attack. Each headline represents another post, with even more vitriol at the link on MMfA’s website:

60 Minutes Questions Suggesting Pelosi “Conflict” Reportedly Based On Schweizer Book

Bush, Beck, Breitbart, Palin: Schweizer’s Deep Right-Wing Ties

Schweizer Previously Pushed Dishonest Smears Of Pelosi In Prior Book

Schweizer Wrote Falsehood-Laden Op-ed Accusing Al Gore Of “Hypocrisy”

Schweizer Authored Book Blaming “Big Government Liberals” For Financial Meltdown

For its part, Politico mostly followed the Media Matters line on the story, with much of its report relying on quotes from Nancy Pelosi’s office. They even included a shot at Schweizer: (more…)

When President Obama called for an end to congressional insider trading during his State of the Union Address last night, there may have been some colorful Greek expletives muttered by a multi-millionaire publisher we all know and love.

When Breitbart News began our coverage of Peter Schweizer’s best-selling book Throw Them All Out, AOL/Huffington Post was quick to proclaim the story dead on arrival.  Their full-page headline proudly proclaimed “Hit Job Falls Flat,” which displayed lousy journalism on multiple levels. AOL/HuffPo characterized the diligently investigated report as a “hit job,” they prematurely proclaimed the story a failure and as we revealed at the time, they allowed Arianna Huffington’s cozy relationship with Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to falsely inform their readers that there was no validity to the congressional insider trading scandal.

Here we are, only ten weeks after AOL/Huffpo called our story a dud, there have been multiple congressional and senate hearings, three different laws drafted and now, using his ultimate bully pulpit, President Obama said this:

What a humiliating moment for the smart-set over at AOL/HuffPo when their candidate lends this level of importance to a story they tried hard to spike. There was a time when AOL/HuffPo tried to sell themselves to the public as a new brand of aggressive and independent journalism fighting against the old guard media who no longer resonate with the American public. Now, AOL/HuffPo is the old guard, running interference for political cronies and using their $300 million megaphone to try to shout-down others who don’t fall in line.

The old-guard media versus new media conflict has less to do with the method of delivery of the news (newsprint versus kilobytes) as much as it has to do with the stale, predictable establishment philosophy that permeates the newsrooms of these organizations.  Take a liberal political reporter from the old-guard like Howard Fineman out of the Newsweek office and put him in the high-tech environment of AOL/HuffPo and you still have the same old repetitive and destructive mindset you had before.

This phenomenon, and what sets true citizen journalism apart from the cronies in the establishment media, was best revealed on my show last night by the journalist who got all this started in the first place, Peter Schweizer, author of Throw Them All Out:

On Monday evening, the political blogosphere was rocked by the unprecedented publishing of a 200-page opposition research book on Mitt Romney written by the John McCain campaign for the 2008 GOP presidential primary. Who decided to release this information to the public? It wasn’t ThinkProgress; it wasn’t Newsweek or the Washington Post or Mother Jones. It was by a website which currently features the headlines “Martial Artist Kicks Down Banana Tree,” “Baby Flummoxed By New Sound,” and “Jessica Simpson Wearing A Giant Deformed Penis Mask.” I kid you not.

BuzzFeed, the name of the site in question, is the latest venture for Politico’s JournoList-er Ben Smith, as previously reported by John Nolte. Smith is heading up the “Politics” section of BuzzFeed, and while he claims objectivity, the case of this leaked document reveals exactly how he plans to use the site to hurt the GOP and aid Obama’s reelection campaign.

Screenshot of BuzzFeed’s politics page

The “About” page of BuzzFeed presents the site as nothing more than a place where readers can find interesting and viral Internet content:

We feature the kind of things you’d want to pass along to your friends: an outrageous video that’s about to go viral, an obscure subculture breaking into the mainstream, a juicy bit of gossip that everyone at the office will be talking about tomorrow, or an ordinary guy having his glorious 15-minutes of fame.

The site’s niche naturally extends to its political page, headed up by Smith. The political news cycle is chock full of bizarre and hilarious information that normally doesn’t end up on NPR–Mitt Romney sparring with pop group LMFAO, Herman Cain singing “Imagine” with pizza-themed lyrics, or Rick Perry blasting a coyote while jogging, for instance. Thus, a site to present this kind of offbeat content (the categories on BuzzFeed include “LOL,” “WTF,” and “Fail”) sounds like a great place to unwind, to set aside all the partisan bickering and just check out posts “for the lulz,” as we whippersnappers say.

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And so, let the word go forth that Super PACs must bloom in every corner of America! Let the free speech flow! Let the money fall like rain, and let the national debate give voice to opinions other than those held by the MSM!

Wikipedia’s description of a Super PAC:

[A] political action committee, or PAC, is the name commonly given to a private group, regardless of size, organized to elect political candidates or to advance the outcome of a political issue or legislation.  … The 2010 election marked the rise of a new political committee, dubbed “super PACs,” and officially known as “independent-expenditure only committees,” which can raise unlimited sums from corporations, unions and other groups, as well as individuals. … Super PACs are not allowed to coordinate directly with candidates or political parties and are required to disclose their donors, just like traditional PACs.

Question: How is any part of that description different from what the MSM does on a daily basis and what it has been doing for years now?

Just like Super PACs, the MSM does most of its partisan campaigning in print, on radio and on television, and just like Super PACs, the MSM enjoys unlimited amounts of cash, much of it coming from the super-rich top 1% and their big multi-national corporations.

There are, however, three important differences between a Super PAC and The New York Times, Washington Post, Politico, The L.A. Times, The Huffington Post, ABC, MSNBC, CNN, NBC, CBS, and all the other usual suspects. And those differences make the case for why Super PACs are better for America than the mainstream media:

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On Monday, both the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post each published opinion articles attacking President Barack Obama’s foreign policy.

Obama and Venezuela;s Hugo Chavez. (Photo source: Huffington Post)

The LAT article, by former Dick Cheney adviser John Hannah, was entitled: “The U.S.: MIA in the Mideast.” It makes the case that despite Obama’s success in the war against Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, overall his foreign policy of “retreat” has destabilized the region:

In private conversations I’ve had with Middle Eastern officials, the sense of unease and dread expressed are only more severe. Fairly or not, these leaders appear to have taken Obama’s measure and found him wanting. Their bill of indictment includes retreat from Iraq and, soon, Afghanistan; betrayal of longtime U.S. allies, especially Mubarak; indulgence of enemy regimes in Tehran and Damascus; overblown promises to end the Palestinian conflict; and a persistent failure to mount the type of credible military option that these leaders believe is necessary for addressing the region’s most urgent threat — Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons.

The hardening conviction that the U.S. is disengaging from the Middle East should be cause for real concern.

Hannah also attacks “the administration’s lack of strategic vision, its instinct for retreat and its complicity in the unraveling of a benevolent imperium that has for decades underwritten the region’s security.” He notes that a perception of U.S. weakness is “one that left unchecked will breed uncertainty, instability and even war.”

The Washington Post article, by columnist Jackson Diehl, declares: “Obama’s foreign initiatives have failed.” Like Hannah, Diehl questions the conventional political wisdom, which sees foreign policy as a strong card for Obama to play in the wake of Osama bin Laden’s death. (more…)

Only a few hours after his impressive Iowa showing, the openly left-wing media is already making an issue out of what’s being called Rick Santorum’s “Google problem,” and they are doing this for a sinister, partisan, and dishonest reason. The idea here is to make this “Google problem” a part of the Santorum narrative. The idea is for the left-wing media to hand this ammo over to their allies in the mainstream media.

Today, the HuffPo was especially helpful in getting the ball rolling:

If you search the term “Santorum” on Google, you’re sure to get some interesting results, notably a site called spreadingsantorum.com. The item’s description sends a pretty clear message:

Santorum 1. The frothy mix of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex. 2. Senator Rick Santorum.

The somewhat graphic result at least appears first in Incognito mode using Google Chrome, which doesn’t track previous search history. Searching “rick santorum” also yields the result on the first page, as the third result.

And, it’s not just a Google problem. The search result comes up on Bing, Yahoo and other search engines.

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Where to begin with my disappointment? Fishbowl DC editor Betsy Rothstein promised (in writing, no less) retaliation against Big Government. For some reason, that didn’t happen. Worse still, what was flung at me came in the form of …  an open letter.

Really? Open letters?

When you prepare to dodge incoming fire from a cool, cutting-edge hipster, you expect something a little more biting than the HuffPo-lame “open letter.” Perhaps an intervention is necessary. Perhaps Ms. Rothstein has friends who might take her aside and explain that “open letters” are the “eating paste” of Internetting.

I’d tell Ms. Rothstein myself, but she wouldn’t listen. According to the open letter, which was cleverly titled “Dear John,” my opinion is meaningless because I have a guilt-by-association problem. Yes, that impotently raged threat Ms. Rothstein posted on Twitter late last week ended up being nothing more than: “We’re right and Nolte’s wrong because of something someone who isn’t him did somewhere else.”

I’m not disappointed someone would stoop to guilt-by-association–we are talking about leftists here–it’s just that if you’re going to go that route, I’d appreciate a little more thought and effort. Had Ms. Rothstein simply reached out prior to her Dear Johnning, I would’ve been happy to help because when it comes to my guilt-by-association sins, I have a history that goes well beyond Rothstein’s desperate twisting of the facts regarding my colleague (and friend) Dan Riehl.

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Alec Baldwin cannot stop sticking his foot into his mouth. He does so again on the virtual pages of the Huffington Post, in explaining his rude behavior on the American Airlines flight from which he was ejected. He describes American Airlines as thus:

Most of the flight attendants I have ever encountered still have some remnant of the old idea of service. Add to that the notion that in this day and age, many people have a lot of important work to do, by phone, and would like to do so till the last possible minute. But there are many now who walk the aisles of an airplane with a whistle around their neck and a clipboard in their hands and they have made flying a Greyhound bus experience.

The lesson I’ve learned is to keep my phone off when the 1950’s gym teacher is on duty.

One of the reasons we created the category under which this post is filed is because the brass over at the Huffington Post denied Andrew Breitbart written space because … drumroll … they didn’t want stuff on their site like this post from Baldwin. We created the helpful “HuffPo Ad Hominem Alert” to help warn HuffPo of when such pieces appear on their site.

But Baldwin is an uber famous Hollywood celebrity and his name is supposed to lend the site some air of credibility, of coolness, so apparently gets a pass. Yes, some grandpa-angry actor with over-the-hill spread is “cool” now. Baldwin’s attitude seethes with stuffed shirt, limousine liberal snobbery.

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Whenever I think of the Huffington Post newsroom I think of the frat house from “PCU.” That’s the only possible explanation for the is-it-or-isn’t-it-true story posted to HuffPo yesterday detailing how Eric Boehlert firmly believes that the bearded Verizon guy at his house was part of a Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.

A short, bearded man stood outside, holding a clipboard and wearing a Verizon uniform. He asked Boehlert if he’d be willing to take a customer survey. Verizon had, perhaps coincidentally, been at the house a week earlier to handle a downed wire. Boehlert quickly agreed and noted that a Verizon worker had actually failed to show up when he said he would.

But as the survey went on, it started getting strange. “The only weird part before he got to his final question was he started telling me, ‘Oh, you know, it’s really tough out there, the economy, and I’m just happy to have a job,’ and stuff like that, which I thought was weird for a customer rep to be telling one of his customers,” Boehlert recalled to HuffPost.

“So he gets to the last questions, and he’s really reading intently off of his clipboard, and he says something about making the kind of salary I do, working from home, something something about the 99 percenters,” Boehlert said.

The man claiming to be a Verizon representative finally asked his question. “After he mentioned my salary and that I work from home, all the bells went off, and this is not who this guy says he is. Therefore, I kind of lost track of the exact wording of the question, but it definitely was like very accusatory of me and I’m a hypocrite and how do I have this supposedly cushy job while I’m writing about real workers and the people of the 99 percent,” said Boehlert.

“So there was this pause, and I said, ‘You work for Verizon?’ And he just sort of looks back at me and [says], ‘Will you answer the question? Will you answer the question?’ And I said, ‘Can I see your Verizon ID?’ And he wouldn’t produce any Verizon ID, and I think he asked me another time to answer the question. And basically I just said, ‘I’m done so you can leave now.’”

The man started to walk off.

Boehlert decided to follow him to obtain his license plate number. By now he had realized that the man was likely pulling a political stunt, and James O’Keefe’s notorious “To Catch a Journalist” project came to mind as a possibility.

Are you ready to lose more brain cells without the benefit of alcohol? Read on.

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Somebody missed the boat. But when you’re so full of your own arrogance and assume no one would dare leave port without you, those things tend to happen.

While MSNBC, CBS News, ”Daily Beast/Newsweek” and others have done superb work in covering the story of Congressional insider trading, Politico and AOL/Huffington have been the most obvious and egregious in their quiet crusade to ignore and/or wrist-flick this inconvenient story down the memory-hole.

But who knew that at the beginning of the week both outlets had only just begun to embarrass themselves?

First there was AOL/Huffington Post, whose front page screamed “HIT JOB FALLS FLAT“ within hours of  Sunday evening’s “60 Minutes” investigative report. This particular segment featured our own Peter Schweizer, whose book Throw Them All Out finally uncovered the dirty little secret of how too many of our elected officials are able to go from Mr. Smith to Daddy Warbucks in just a few short years.

And then there was the Cain-obsessed Politico, that found a nothing-story about decade-plus old allegations of sexual harassment worthy of somewhere around 200 articles, but the revelation of legal (but immoral and corrupting) Congressional insider trading hardly worth a peep.

We now know why the the Huffington Post was so eager to protect the corrupt status quo and defend Nancy Pelosi even if it meant defending John Boehner. Yes, just a few days after HIT JOB FALLS FLAT ran, there they were, Nancy and Arianna, sitting in a tree s-c-h-m-o-o-z-i-n-g.

As far as Politico, as someone who saw that rag for what it is three years ago, it’s been extremely gratifying to watch the outlet all but ignore this story just days after baring their collective asses with a failed attempt to crucify Herman Cain with a nothingburger of a story that even left-wing media observers declared a nothingburger. To say the least, the damage Politico’s done to their brand has opened many eyes.

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On November 16, Alec Baldwin had a column in the Huffington Post titled, “What Occupy Wall Street Has Taught Me.” In it, the actor who promised to leave the United States if George W. Bush were re-elected in 2004 reminds us not only that he’s still here, but that he is still as arrogant and illogical as ever.

For example, throughout the column Baldwin talks about the struggles faced by people who are unemployed.  And although he doesn’t explicitly say it’s not their fault that they’re unemployed—as it clearly is in some cases—he implies as much when complains that those of us who are gainfully employed seem to believe “that we are not responsible in any way” for those who aren’t.

In other words, it’s not their fault that their unemployed. Rather, it’s the fault of the corporations, of Wall Street, and of big oil. (In case these points seem little more than restatements of what the hippies and freaks of #OccupyWallStreet have been saying, Baldwin admits: “Everything I have put forth here, I have heard articulated from the Occupy Wall Street movement.”)

By the way, according to Baldwin, our bailouts to big oil weren’t always monetary in nature. Rather, “[we] bailed out the oil companies every time you watched … as American troops went to Iraq to fight a war for oil.”

As an aside, I can’t figure out why leftists like Baldwin keep spewing this trash. If we fought in Iraq for oil, where’s the oil? Why are our gas prices rising instead of falling? Don’t get me wrong, I think oil would be a great way for Iraq to repay us for getting rid of Saddam Hussein, but thus far, none has been forthcoming.

The further you read into Baldwin’s column, the more random things get. For instance, at one point he blames our economic woes on the fact that “we have no high speed rail in this country.” The last time he said something this random was in a September column, when he blamed our current economy on the fact that we spent the Bush years fighting “a trillion dollars worth of wars with no tax hikes.”

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Is it a coincidence that four days after Nancy Pelosi sat and gave an exclusive pep talk/schmooze session with AOL’s Arianna Huffington and an all-female editorial meeting in the offices of AOL/HuffPo, Arianna’s Washington Bureau Chief phoned-in a “nothing-to-see-here” apologia for the former-Speaker’s congressional insider trading scandal?

Huffington Post's wishful thinking headline a few hours after a "60 Minutes" report on congressional insider trading.

As liberal news outlets like CBS News, Daily Beast/Newsweek and even MSNBC saw fit to report the fact that former Speaker Nancy Pelosi was involved in a sweetheart IPO for VISA, while at the same time ensuring that tough regulations that would have stifled VISA’s profits stayed bottled up in the Pelosi-controlled House of Representatives, AOL/HuffPo opted to re-print Pelosi’s talking points and obfuscations in lieu of doing actual reporting.

With the awkward and ham-handed headline “Hit Job Falls Flat,” you can almost see Arianna herself hammering out bullet points on her blackberry, firing them off to reporter Ryan Grim in an effort to put her elegant fingers in the metaphorical dyke to stop the gushing in the most serious corruption story to hit Pelosi’s long career.  The banner headline, full of wishful thinking, ran just hours after the “60 Minutes” story.  First thing on a Monday morning at the beginning of a news cycle is a curious time to declare that a story “fell flat.”

In fact, the story was talked about on cable news and in the halls of congress all day.  It inspired new legislation to finally make the corrupt practice of congressional insider trading illegal.  Presidential candidate Rick Perry produced a 30-second ad featuring the story and calling for jail-time for any politician who profited from insider information.  If this is “falling flat” I would like to see AOL/HuffPo’s idea of a successful investigative report.

Seriously, I’d really like to see one.  Do they even do anything like that, or do they just sit back and let the rest of us do all of the real reporting?

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Faced with a groundbreaking investigation by investigative journalist and Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer that reveals corrupt self-dealing on both sides of the aisle in Congress, the mainstream media had two options:

1. Criticize both sides in proportion to their involvement.
2. Defend both sides, in order to protect Democrats in power.

Yesterday, Politico chose #2. Today, Huffington Post has joined it, defending the Republican speaker it routinely derides, in order to protect the former Democrat speaker that many of its contributors hope to reinstate.

Screen grab by NewsBusters.org

As Noel Sheppard of NewsBusters points out:

As far-left outlets like the Huffington Post applaud what’s happening with the Occupy Wall Street movement around the country, you would think they’d welcome the sunlight being brought by Schweizer and 60 Minutes exposing a little known way that lawmakers use their access to further their own nests.

Pelosi is said to be worth $35 million. If she is using her position in Congress to add to her riches, shouldn’t the Huffington Post, as an unapologetic supporter of the Occupy Wall Street movement, applaud efforts to end such graft as it’s being exposed? (more…)

From Accuracy in Media’s Cliff Kincaid:

The FBI has released photos, videos, and documents in the case of 10 Russian secret agents arrested—and quickly deported—in 2010. The documents are mostly heavily redacted and of no practical value to those interested in the details about on-going Russian operations against the U.S. What is perhaps more interesting and significant is what the Russians are doing in plain sight by using American cable and satellite systems against us.

In this context, a complaint has now been filed with the Obama Justice Department over Russian propaganda broadcasts in the U.S.

While the FBI disclosures, such as they are, suggest that the Moscow regime regards the U.S. as an adversary, if not enemy, they are not nearly as fascinating as what Moscow is doing in the form of Russia Today (RT) propaganda broadcasts reaching tens of millions of American homes.

Media carriers for the Moscow-funded channel, which changed its name to RT from Russia Today to mask the foreign connection, include Time Warner Cable, Comcast, Verizon Fios, Cox Cable, RCN Cable, MHz Networks, and Dish Networks.

RT, a big backer of the Occupy Wall Street protests, has assigned several reporters to cover the demonstrations around the country. The channel has called the protests “America’s Arab Spring,” with an emphasis on alleged police brutality against the demonstrators. One RT program, “The Big Picture,” with self-described progressive Democrat Thom Hartmann, has also focused on the Wall Street protests. Hartmann has refused to disclose how much he is paid by RT for the rights to broadcast his show.

RT’s media “partners” include The Huffington Post and the website WhatReallyHappened, which questions whether Arab terrorists were behind 9/11.

RT employs a correspondent in Britain, Katia Zatuliveter, who went to work for the channel after being accused of conducting espionage against Britain. She is in the process of being deported. It doesn’t take much of an imagination to consider that some of its reporters working in America may also be agents of the Vladimir Putin regime.

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Jose Antonio Vargas is obviously hoping to become some sort of disenfranchised, victimized media folk hero. You have to wonder how seriously the MSM will take him as he wags his finger and makes these sanctimonious pronouncements.

HuffPo:

Jose Antonio Vargas, the journalist who shocked the country when he revealed he was an undocumented immigrant, has challenged the media to cover the debate around immigration more comprehensively.

Vargas, a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist and former editor at the Huffington Post, made headlines when he came out as an undocumented immigrant this past summer. Now, he aims to take on immigration reform, starting with changing what he believes is the one-dimensional nature of immigration coverage.

On Tuesday, Vargas lamented the media’s “familiar story line” about undocumented immigrants: that they “are a drain on the struggling U.S. economy, taking away jobs from native workers and posing a threat to American culture and livelihood.”

Vargas spoke with Charles Kenny, who penned a column for Bloomberg Businessweek arguing that hiring an undocumented immigrant is actually good for the U.S. economy. According to Kenny, covering immigration is “frustrating” and “annoying” from all different angles. For one thing, the positive side of illegal immigration is “politically dead in the water,” he said, and for another, people often assume that the negative side is true.

One way to “more comprehensively” cover immigration might be for the journalist who spoke with Vargas, Charles Kenny, to have pen, paper, and television camera ready after he discloses Vargas’ whereabouts to the Immigration Department.

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Last week in HuffPo:

Garry Trudeau’s “Doonesbury” comic has been pulled from the Chicago Tribune this week because, according to the newspaper’s editorial staff, its content, excerpted from Joe McGinniss’s Sarah Palin biography, violates their standards of fairness. …

But McGinniss has been open about his collaboration with the Trudeau, whose fictional character, Roland Hedley, has been “stalking” McGinniss throughout his process of researching the biography. Prior to the book’s scheduled Sept. 20 release date, several excerpts are due to appear in “Doonesbury” strips — all with the author’s blessing, according to the Washington Post.

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Ooopsie. Looks like all is not honey and roses in the left-wing, out of the mainstream land of Huffington Post. When one of the site’s most popular bloggers and celebrities calls HuffyPo readers stupid, it makes for a tense atmosphere among the out of the stratosphere left.

Alec Baldiwn, famed for his left-wing diatribes — oh, and some acting here and there — took to Twitter once again to criticize the readers and commenters at HuffPo after a gaggle of negative comments posted at the tail end of one of his latest HuffPo screeds.

“The reading comprehension level of the HuffPo comments folks is alarmingly low. I mean, downright awful,” Baldwin lamented.

Now, usually when I write about things like this I go into why the comment by the writer was made, what misconceptions were evinced by his critics, and what his response was to those critics… but it’s Alec Baldwin and Huffington Post we are talking about here. Making sense of anything that goes on there is somewhat impossible, not to mention a waste of time.

Suffice to say, it is interesting to see leftists calling each other names. And this isn’t the only time Alec Baldwin has scolded readers of HuffPo. He’s done it on Twitter before. (more…)