The Chicago Sun Times has received your message loud and clear, dear readers. As much as admitting that they are biased and they know it, the long-time Windy City staple has decided that hence forth it will no longer endorse candidates for political office.

In a Sunday editorial, the 71-year-old paper announced its new policy amusingly touting the Old Media’s party line that it engages in “unbiased news coverage” and that newspapers today wish to “appeal to the widest possible readership.”

“They want to inform you, not spin you,” the editorial avers. Yet, the editorial goes on to admit that it has heard from readers who seriously doubt that dedication to unbiased news coverage. And when you note that over the last several decades few national news papers have endorsed a Republican for President — most especially the left-leaning Chicago Sun-Times — it is easy to doubt that purported dedication to just-the-facts reporting.

The Sun-Times is so dedicated to helping Democrats get elected, it even endorsed disgraced Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich for reelection. Yes, even after his troubles were well known by even the most uninformed Illinois voter. After reelection Governor Blagojevich ended up being convicted on several counts of fraud and influence peddling when he tried to sell the Senate seat that Obama gave up to become president. Blago will begin serving a 14-year sentence in a federal prison this February.

Yet, even before Blago’s convictions for selling the Senate seat he was involved in numerous scandals and still the Times endorsed him any way saying. “There’s no denying the cloud of scandal over his administration,” the Times then wrote. Going on, the Times said, “We’ve chosen to give him the benefit of the doubt and endorse him for a number of reasons.”

It is a bit hard to escape the feeling that the “number of reasons” the Times endorsed the corrupt Blago was spelled D-E-M-O-C-R-A-T!

One has to doubt the commitment to vetting candidates, anyway. All too often the editorial board’s entire decision rests solely on the candidate questionnaires as opposed to any deeper study of candidate’s records or campaigns. Worse, when it comes to judges the Sun-Times most especially would just rely on the left-wing endorsements of the Chicago Bar Association, a horribly biased source for information on judges.

The Times did make an interesting point in its announcement, but only by accident, it appears.

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Two days ago this poll was released and yet the real story isn’t found in the headline or until the sixth and seventh paragraphs:

As a guest on CNBC’s Squawk Box, Meredith Whitney thought she was on safe ground when she opined that Tea Party members were”freaked out white men who are unemployed,” then followed up with blaming the grass roots movement for the problems in Washington DC. Whitney should have should have looked at the schedule before she spoke, because Rick Santelli was on next. As you would expect after he was done with his Chicago exchange report Santelli, who helped start the tea party movement with an epic rant, lit into Ms Whitney giving her a classic, well-deserved verbal “bitch slap” even getting a bit personal.

MEREDITH WHITNEY,  Banking Analyst: I would suggest that the debate is really around unemployment, and I think that, you know, call the Tea Party whatever you will, the fringe element is, you know, I characterize freaked out white men who are unemployed and have been unemployed for three years and they’re scared to death. And three to four million of them are just about to roll off of unemployment benefits in the next three months. So, this is only going to get worse. For this reason, you have to deal with structural issues. So, if you are a Machiavellian Democrat, you want to deal with this issue and defuse the Tea Party as fast as you possibly can, because this poses the biggest threat to their reelection I think in ’12.

BTW, not only is Ms. Whitney wrong in her opinion of the nature of the tea party, but she is also wrong about the gender. According to Dr. Helen Smith writing for the PJ Tatler:

Many of the tea party’s most influential grass-roots and national leaders are women, and a new poll released this week by Quinnipiac University suggests that women might make up a majority of the movement as well.

After the Banking expert gave her little speech about the Tea Party, Santelli gave his regular report and then began his take-down of Ms Whitney.

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Thursday night, the Illinois Supreme Court reinstated Oswald Cobblepot’s name on the ballot to be Mayor of Chicago in time for the February 22nd election. You may be familiar with him by his other name: Rahm Emanuel.

You may remember Oswald Cobblepot, A.K.A. “The Penguin,” from the “Batman” films of Tim Burton. He was a wretched little man who was beloved by the City of Gotham and well on his way to being elected Mayor – that is until the heroic Batman played a looped recording of Oswald saying “You gotta admit, I’ve played this stinking city like a harp from Hell.” That is what I’ve envisioned Emanuel saying in my head over and over again since he began his campaign for Mayor of Chicago.

Except that Rahm Emanuel isn’t the only one who has played Chicago. The MSM have too.

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Why am I not surprised.  Once again the Main Stream Media (MSM) exposes its lack of journalistic integrity in ignoring news that doesn’t fit its liberal narrative, when all but one of Chicago’s MSM snubbed a well publicized press conference with over 40 African-American religious and political leaders who gathered “… to decry the misrepresentation of King’s legacy and the noble civil rights cause” as being equivalent to the efforts by the Left and homosexual activists to legalize same-sex marriage.

The impetus for the gathering was the recent passage by the Illinois General Assembly in a veto session—the equivalent of a lame-duck—of the “Illinois Religious Freedom Protection and Civil Union Act.”

Illinois Family Institute publicized the press conference to Chicago’s major media outlets NBC, ABC, Fox Chicago, WGN, Univision, WBBM, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times, Daily Herald, and the Southtown Star.  David E. Smith, IFI Executive Director, stated, “Sadly, the only major secular news outlet in Chicago that covered this important event was WBBM radio and television (CBS). While Univision and WGN News attended the press conference, apparently the producers decided it didn’t fit their messaging on the issue of so-called ‘gay rights.’”  To their credit IFI had their own camera rolling during the event, a portion of which you can view here:

Just think how widespread the coverage would have been had these African-Americans gathered to show their support for the bill.  I dare say it would have been wall to wall.

It isn’t just national issues that the Old Media misreports. As we focus on the “big” stories of the day, we often overlook the local scene and the left-wing excuse for “reporting,” therefrom. This is a perfect example of that.

Imagine you are a sophomore in high school and your sex ed teacher forces you to prance about your classroom singing and dancing to “The Vagina Dance” in a puerile attempt to teach the parts and functions of the female sex organ. Worse, imagine you are a male student in a classroom of such an unhinged teacher? Well, we don’t have to imagine it too hard because this exact situation has happened in a classroom in the Chicago, Illinois suburbs. But don’t worry. Chicago’s Old Media is all about reporting this incident honestly. Well, if honestly means to ignore relevant facts and shore up support for the out of control teacher and smooth things over for the school, that is.

Early this month, parent Robert King, whose son goes to Crystal Lake’s Prairie Ridge High School, complained to school authorities over the inappropriate teaching methods of health teacher Jacqulyn Levin. As a teaching tool Levin used “The Vagina Dance,” a song replete with dance steps and arm movements, and required her entire co-ed class to participate in it – all to the tune of The Hokey Pokey, no less. As it happens King’s son was uncomfortable being required to prance about the room, arms emulating fallopian tubes, and singing about vaginas, so the parents complained.

In response the teacher claimed that her song was nothing but a harmless “kinesthetic device” meant to help the kids learn through “fun.” The Illinois Family Institute, however, begs to differ and called the claim, “a rationalization, an obvious and foolish attempt to conceal the inappropriateness and silliness of the activity with a patina of pedagogical legitimacy” (I love how they used edu-speak against the teacher, too. Kudos to that.)

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No matter what you call the mainstream media (the “old media,” the “state-run media,” etc.), it has to be admitted that those who comprise it have a vested interest in preserving an outdated, and dangerous, liberal establishment in this country. To that end, members of the mainstream media not only present the news in half-truths that make conservatism and conservatives look bad, they also do (and say) whatever they have to do in order to make liberals look good.

In this way, they have actually become an extension of the liberal-most portions of the Democrat Party.

For example, just think of how they vilified Republican candidates Christine O’Donnell in Delaware and Joe Miller in Alaska during last the recent elections. Because both candidates were true conservatives, the media was quick to pounce on them and prove them unfit for office, in an effort to dissuade voters from supporting them.

On the other hand, think about how members of the mainstream media are now carrying water for Chicago Mayoral candidate Rahm Emanuel: a liberal candidate who may not even be a legal resident of Chicago and who, while serving as President Obama’s Chief of Staff, may have pushed for the passage of Stimulus legislation in order to increase his own personal wealth.

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Former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel made it official on Saturday: He is running for Mayor of Chicago. Emanuel staged his media event at Coonley Elementary School, a public school in his old congressional district. It wasn’t a press conference since Emanuel did not answer any questions and the Chicago media was actually content not to ask any.

Kelly/Rahm from Breitbart on Vimeo.

Emanuel’s announcement reminded me of the old Soviet Union-style speeches where people used to afraid to be the first ones to stop clapping. Along with the shouts of joy and bursts of over-enthusiastic applause, there was something menacing in that room. What were the Chicago media so afraid of? Or were they just being Rahm’s good little apparatchiks?

I asked a Rahm staffer if the media were going to be allowed to ask Emanuel any questions. She said “no.” I knew that meant one thing: I had to ask a question. After his announcement, I knew Emanuel was probably hiding in the building waiting for everyone to leave. I waited until his staffers had cleared the last reporters from the room. As I was leaving, I noticed Emanuel was, in fact, waiting in one of the outside exits for the “all clear” sign from his staffer. That was as good of an opportunity as I was going to get.

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Our national print media is, generally speaking, hopelessly left-wing. The same is often true of the local press in many places, and the public rarely has recourse to an impartial alternative.

Take, for example, the struggling Pioneer Press in suburban Chicago, owned by the Sun-Times. Its affiliates are the main news sources in many communities in Illinois’s 9th congressional district, where I challenged incumbent Democrat Jan Schakowsky.

Throughout the 2010 election–and in its aftermath–the Pioneer Press did all it could to instruct readers to support Schakowsky. The Evanston Review, which is distributed in Schakowsky’s home town, was particularly bad. In July, for example, the same article that appeared in other papers as “Campaign cash flows for Schakowsky and Pollak” appeared in Evanston under the headline: “Campaign cash flows for Schakowsky, foe.”

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Conservative radio host William Kelly (Kelly Truth Squad AM 560 WIND) recently found himself on the receiving end of mainstream media hostility, as he tried aggressively to interview Rahm Emanuel during Chicago’s Columbus Day Parade.

Chicago Media Icon, Jay Levine of CBS 2, threatened to physically harm Kelly if he didn’t shut up and go away. Levine issued this threat in front of no less than 3 cameras.

Several days later, William Kelly pressed 2nd degree assault charges against Jay Levine.

Our cameras caught up with Levine, and all of the other people involved with this story, to document their reactions to the latest developments.

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Illinois Democratic State Senator Ricky Hendon said that Republican Gubernatorial candidate Bill Brady wanted to kill homosexuals and that women should have no rights.  Hendon also called Brady idiotic, racist, sexist, and homophobic.  But, if you watched the Fox channel in Chicago for your local news, you’d never know it.

In a classic case of offering the bare minimum, token coverage of a major story, WFLD pretended to cover the uproar over the speech without really covering it.  Here is their report with a very small portion (the tamest, in fact) of Hendon’s remarks:

Now read Hendon’s actual remarks:

I’ve never served with such an idiotic, racist, sexist, homophobic person in my life. If you think that the minimum wage needs to be three dollars an hour, vote for Bill Brady. If you think that women have no rights whatsoever, except to have his children, vote for Bill Brady. If you think gay and lesbian people need to be locked up and shot in the head, vote for Bill Brady.

Not only does the media pass over his most offensive charges, but then they go out and find Gov. Pat Quinn’s running mate to support the spirit of Hendon’s outrageous remarks, if not the actual words.  Even Quinn has refused to apologize for the remarks made while he was standing right next to Hendon.  Quinn has also said that they should not “mask in any way the positions that Bill Brady has taken.” (more…)

I’m a lifelong Chicagoan and grew up on the Southside, where Democrat machine politics is the norm and a way of life. In fact, I grew up two blocks from Louis Farrakhan’s house and, ironically, ran for the same congressional seat as Barack Obama did against Rep. Bobby Rush. We both lost. He eventually won… the Presidency.

Despite the political environment, or because of it, I am a conservative. I host a radio show called the Kelly Truth Squad on WIND-AM (560) in the Midwest. I also contribute to the “Big” blogs and to the Washington Times. Prior to this, I had been involved in anti-tax policy advocacy and activism since the early 1990s. As a result, I have taken numerous politicians to task with difficult questions the media hasn’t taken too kindly to. The upshot is that it isn’t easy being a conservative but it, especially, isn’t easy being a conservative in Chicago.

However, it is a city I understand very, very well. Consequently, I knew all the politicians would be out in force at Columbus and Balboa Drive on Monday, where they always are on Columbus Day. I wanted to interview as many politicians as possible for my radio show and for my blog. I also knew that Rahm Emanuel, an announced candidate for Mayor of Chicago, would also be there. He had been getting softball questions from the Chicago media all week. Not a tough question in sight. I thought, great, this is a perfect opportunity to ask him about the stimulus bill – something that he might believe was his greatest accomplishment as President Obama’s Chief of Staff. I wanted to hear his answer to this question since many Americans are angry about the stimulus.

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Join Breitbart.tv Editor-In-Chief Larry O’Connor as he interviews the newest addition to the “Big Team,” Dana Loesch, Editor of Big Journalism. We’ll discuss her plans for Big Journalism as well as her exclusive story on thuggish reporters in Chicago that swept through the web today.

We’ve often said that the media “protects” President Obama but this video from WIND radio host and Big Blogs contributor William Kelly shows this allegation literally.

Kelly, a Chicagoan, was there when Rahm Emanuel was pressing the flesh, kissing babies, and greeting reporters. Emanuel didn’t account for unassuming Kelly to fire off serious journalistic questions more pressing than the requisite “how’s it feel to be back?”

Kelly didn’t account for was the manner in which Chicago reporters behaved. Are these reporters or palace guards? In the video you see them physically move to shield Emanuel from Kelly’s questioning, as though their backs alone would deflect the questions. Kelly is berated and shoved by mainstream media journalists, but the scene stealer is when CBS2’s Jay Levine (who has not responded to my requests for comment) screams at Kelly, “Let him finish or I’m gonna deck you!”

Fireworks begin at about the 1:00 mark:

Who needs bodyguards with media like CBS2’s Jay Levine and the local ABC guy?

From Kelly’s release: (more…)

Rahm “the Ballerina” Emanuel may announce that he’s abandoning the foundering hulk of the S.S. Obama Administration to go back to the criminal racket known as Chicago Democratic politics.  According to the Wall Street Journal:

Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff who has one eye on the exit, has made scores of calls to Chicago politicians, businessmen and labor leaders to clear a place at the starting line in the race to succeed Mayor Richard M. Daley.

People close to Mr. Emanuel say he might resign from his current job as soon as Friday, though according to Rep. Danny Davis, family concerns are giving him pause. Said the Illinois Democrat, who met with Mr. Emanuel last week—and who may run himself: “I got the impression he’s very close to announcing. Much of our conversation centered around the likelihood that he would run.”

By sheer coincidence, Emanuel’s partner in the Obama brain trust, David Axelrod, recently announced that he, too, is returning to Chicago.

Considering Obama’s poll numbers — as well as those of Axelrod’s warmup act, Mass. Gov. “Cadillac” Deval Patrick… (more…)

One might think it would be big news that a Chief Steward for a local chapter of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is being investigated by the FBI for possible connection to overseas terror networks. Apparently, though, several Chicago news outlets didn’t see a reason to add this little fact to their stories.

And even if it wasn’t big news that the FBI is investigating a union member, one would think that his profession would at least make an appearance somewhere in properly formulated coverage of the story…  right?

Over the weekend the FBI announced that it was investigating Joe Iosbaker for possible connections to overseas terror groups. Iosbaker and his wife Stephanie Weiner, both anti-war activists, are suspected of activities “concerning the material support of terrorism.” (more…)

From WGN:

David Axelrod, a top advisor to President Obama and the main architect of his election victory in 2008, will be leaving the White House next year and returning to Chicago to work on the president’s re-election campaign, a White House aide said Thursday.

Axelrod has not specified a departure date, but he plans to remain in his current position “well into 2011,” the aide said.

Axelrod, who calls himself a “Chicagoan on assignment,” has long made clear he missed his hometown and would return before the end of the four-year term. His wife still lives in the city.

One of Obama’s most trusted aides, Axelrod occupies a small office just steps from the Oval Office. On a wall in Axelrod’s office hangs a picture of the White House drawn by his daughter. The Chicago skyline is shown in the reflecting pool.

Axelrod, a former Chicago Tribune reporter and City Hall bureau chief-turned-campaign consultant, is the latest of the Obama crew to voluntarily dive overboard, joining Peter Orszag, Christina Romer, Larry Summers and, soon enough, fellow Chicagoan Rahm Emanuel. (more…)

No better illustration of the herd mentality of the press corps than this classic from the musical, Chicago. Just substitute the state-controlled Washington press corps for the knockabout Chitown police and court reporters, and presto: The New York Times, the Washington Post and MSNBC:

You know, when you stop to think about it… (more…)