Attorney General Eric Holder needs to send Charlie Savage at The New York Times a huge box of chocolates for Valentine’s Day. The NYT is the biggest cheerleader for Mr. Holder and this entire administration.

We all know how well I get along with Mr. Savage. His articles are notorious for being incredibly pro-Holder. This one is no different. Actually, it’s very anti-Darrell Issa. There isn’t anything negative about Mr. Holder or the Democrats on the committee. The more I read it I realize it’s not really about the hearing: It’s almost as if Mr. Savage and the Times used it as an excuse to write an article to prop up Mr. Holder. Mr. Savage completely glosses over anything the Republicans brought up.

First off, Mr. Savage, Operation Fast and Furious was not botched. Katie Pavlich at Townhall wrote about it here. It worked exactly the way it was suppose to. It was not botched. It did not fail. If anything, Operation Fast and Furious worked out the exact way it should.

Mr. Savage is right: The Republicans did rip into Mr. Holder, but for good reason. He forgets to mention the reason why the Republicans are so mad. They gave Mr. Holder and the DOJ a subpoena on October 12, 2011 and the department has given them the bare minimum. The department is stonewalling them. They’re mad because the documents were dumped on a Friday night. Again. Mr. Savage only brings up a quote from Representative Burton about Mr. Holder stonewalling them. He could have talked about Mr. Issa’s opening statement about the DOJ not cooperating.

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On Monday Representative Darrell Issa threatened Attorney General Eric Holder with a contempt of Congress if he does not fulfill Mr. Issa’s subpoena from October 12, 2011. Hardly anyone reported it. But then when I went to Google “Issa Eric Holder” this evening and a bunch of results came up. Unfortunately it was not about Mr. Issa’s statements. Instead it’s all about Mr. Holder and the Department of Justice’s remarks.

I’ve mentioned before it’s unusual for the Old Media to run any Fast and Furious news if the AP didn’t run something first. Same thing with this story. AP didn’t bother to post a story about Mr. Issa, but as soon as Mr. Holder says something they’re all over it. It’s quite pathetic and reminds me of Pavlov’s dog. This is the explanation of Mr. Issa’s letter:

Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., made the accusation in a letter threatening to seek a contempt of Congress ruling against Attorney General Eric Holder for failing to turn over congressionally subpoenaed documents that were created after problems with Fast and Furious came to light. Holder was to testify Thursday before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which Issa chairs.

That’s it. No mention that this is a response to his subpoena on October 12, 2011. No mention of the emails sent Friday night. But the media goes crazy and reprints this article.

Not every outlet used the AP story though. The Washington Post again had an original piece written by Sari Horwitz! Weird, isn’t it, that she writes original posts when the DOJ and Democrats are on the defense. Surprise surprise! The story is on the front page of the website.

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The protest endorsed by progressive media. From Huffington Post San Francisco:

Have you noticed that MSM started distancing itself from the occupy protests?

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The Obamas threw an epic Halloween bash in 2009 and we’re only just now discovering how over-the-top the bash was — and how complicit media was in keeping the White House’s secret. After all, White House staff was “concerned” that the extravagant bash would appear tone-deaf to unemployed Americans, hundreds of thousands of whom are leaving the workforce entirely as new jobs are scarce and businesses are stretched thin. But is the story what it seems?

The White House has thrown so many over-the top parties and the First Lady has come under fire from the President’s advisers for her expensive tastes, so the initial reaction to hearing of yet another extravagant White House party is anger. But was the Halloween bash like the other White House parties? Was it like the party with Paul McCartney that the Obamas enjoyed while the Gulf struggled with an oil spill? Or the party the White House threw when America had its credit rating downgraded? If media reports are to be believed, the Halloween bash was “staged“/thrown by Tim Burton and Johnny Depp. Security for the event would cost the public, but (I assume) comparatively no more than the cost of the annual Easter egg roll or other observances.

The point of the question isn’t to excuse the Obamas’ past irresponsibility in presentation; they lead one of the most tone-deaf administrations (Camelot style in a Carter economy, after all). The point is that this event, from my understanding, was for, and attended predominately by, military members and their families. This party is easier to justify, and features a better guest list, than the previous devil-may-care variety. I don’t want to discourage Hollywood from doing something nice for our soldiers when 99% of the movies they make about them portray them as monsters. The last time Johnny Depp dabbled in politics he called the country a “big dumb puppy.” A good deed like footing the bill (assumedly sans Secret Service, other security) for a bash thrown in honor of military families deserves some positive reinforcement by way of kudos, if this report is true.

There is still the pesky question of why the White House and media in attendance kept all of this quiet.

The White House press corps was allowed to report on more modest festivities earlier that day for Washington-area school children, but did not release details of the more glamorous festivities that occurred later for what was the Obamas’ first Halloween in office in 2009.

Why? One could beg the question that the White House and media didn’t disclose this because they knew it was wrong. Why would it be wrong? Because of public reaction? This is where it gets sneaky. It’s a set up: The narrative will be that details weren’t released because the White House didn’t want folks freaking out over extravagances for military families provided by a Hollywood director and his actor/muse. The narrative will progress into a notion that conservatives are tight-fisted when it comes to providing military families with a nice Halloween, one that wasn’t even at the conservatives’s expense. It will reinforce the stereotype that conservatives and Hollywood will always be at odds, and can’t a film director throw a party for the military if he wants? GOSH.

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- Media enacts DNC talking points on blaming tea party for congressional gridlock.

- Jay Gray, the reporter who got sauced with Sandusky’s equally creepy attorney as a way to win an exclusive interview (and was later arrested on DUI charges) may have been axed from the beat. The New York Post reports:

NBC’s Jay Gray may soon be taken off the Jerry Sandusky story, after he was arrested for DUI earlier this month …

… we’re told he “was kicked off the story” and left Pennsylvania this week. Another insider said Gray was on a family vacation, and the network “hasn’t made a decision” if he’ll continue to cover Sandusky.

- NatGeo writer says God is intolerant. Take it up with Him.

- New footage shows Ron Paul may not have stormed out of CNN interview after all.

- Congress calls on Twitter to block the Taliban.

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The Left is apoplectic over this year’s PolitiFact Lie of the Year. Given that PolitiFact came under so much fire from the right this year, conservatives should be cautious, even if optimistic. A year-end gift, or a big show of balancing of the scale, will not undo any damage PolitiFact might do during the course of any year. In fact, leftists may be upset precisely because they are more generally accustomed to PolitiFact having their backs.

PolitiFact debunked the Medicare charge in nine separate fact-checks rated False or Pants on Fire, most often in attacks leveled against Republican House members.

Now, PolitiFact has chosen the Democrats’ claim as the 2011 Lie of the Year.

It’s the third year in a row that a health care claim has won the dubious honor. In 2009, the winner was the Republicans’ charge that the Democrats’ health care plan included “death panels.” In 2010, it was that the plan was a “government takeover of health care.”

Criticisms from the right can easily be found via the PolitiFact Wiki. Certainly, now they can claim to have received harsh criticism from both sides in 2011–they must be doing something right, right?

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Here we go with dog whistle again.

The Nation’s Lizzy Ratner surmises that it’s racist to acknowledge that a record number of Americans are on the government dole.

The deep racism at the heart of conservative food stamp critiques offers at least one clue as to why the Obama administration has been unable or unwilling to champion SNAP as a valuable recession antidote: as the nation’s first African-American president, Obama is vulnerable to racist innuendo, which his opponents are only too happy to exploit. Just two months after Gingrich made his “food stamp president” comment, another would-be president, Rick Santorum, picked up the theme, accusing Obama, absurdly, of “pushing more people on food stamps.”

Lloyd Marcus illustration

Is the below “deep racism?”

The CBO predicted that the US economy will be unsustainable by 2037 on its current path.

The IMF declared two weeks ago that the age of America will end in a decade.

One in six Americans now receive government help. USA Today says more Americans are receiving federal aid than ever. Investors’ Insight says more Americans than ever before are on the government dole.

Lastly, according to our own government statistics, more white Americans receive federal aid than blackAmericans, shattering the stereotype that led Walsh to immediately think “black people” when she heard the words “food stamps.”

Did Ratner bother to actually research welfare statistics before assuming that the critics were “racist” because she stereotypically believes that the majority of welfare recipients are black? Because the majority of welfare recipients are white.

So which is actually racist?

a) Criticizing dependance upon government for personal sustainability or;

b) assuming that all those who are dependent upon government are black?

This is a trend with progressives, this prejudiced association of welfare and black Americans.

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Charlie Savage’s newest piece at The New York Times is, as my friend Sean Arthur on Twitter says, a shameless PR drivel and allows Mr. Holder to make ludicrous statements without challenge and pulls the race card. The New York Times and Charlie Savage are really going to do this after all the articles they published during Attorney General Alberto Gonzales scandals? Give me a break.

The hypocrisy at The New York Times is too much to take. I’ve read The New York Times articles on Mr. Gonzales over and over. I never once saw an article that was sympathetic to Mr. Gonzales. My favorite piece is an editorial titled, “Why This Scandal Matters.” What a great title! The Times covered every single detail in the Gonzales “scandal” someone had to write an editorial to justify it. You could fit the first paragraph with Operation Fast and Furious. [Bold my emphasis.]

It (the administration) has offered up implausible excuses, hidden the most damaging evidence and feigned memory lapses, while hoping that the public’s attention moves on. But this scandal is too important for the public or Congress to move on. This story should not end until Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is gone, and the serious damage that has been done to the Justice Department is repaired.

This “scandal” involved the firing of eight US Attorneys. No one died. Not a single person. Three hundred-plus Mexicans have died because of Operation Fast and Furious. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was murdered with a gun from the operation on American soil. I wonder if The New York Times and Mr. Savage could explain to me why Mr. Gonzales’s scandal mattered and Fast and Furious does not?

The best part, though, was Mr. Holder taking a jab at people like Sharyl Attkisson, Cam Edwards, Katie Pavlich, Matthew Boyle, and myself. [Bold my emphasis.]

But Mr. Holder contended that many of his other critics — not only elected Republicans but also a broader universe of conservative commentators and bloggers — were instead playing “Washington gotcha” games, portraying them as frequently “conflating things, conveniently leaving some stuff out, construing things to make it seem not quite what it was” to paint him and other department figures in the worst possible light.

Of that group of critics, Mr. Holder said he believed that a few — the “more extreme segment” — were motivated by animus against Mr. Obama and that he served as a stand-in for him. “This is a way to get at the president because of the way I can be identified with him,” he said, “both due to the nature of our relationship and, you know, the fact that we’re both African-American.”

Conflating things? How do we “conflate things” when we provide the documents PROVING our points? Plus if we are leaving out things it’s because Mr. Holder and the Department of Justice aren’t providing us with all the details.

This is what angers me the most. Basically Mr. Holder says that people like Ms. Attkisson, Mr. Edwards, Mr. Boyle, Ms. Pavlich, and I are staying on top of Operation Fast and Furious and asking you questions is because we’re racist? Let’s return to the Times editorial “Why This Scandal Matters” shall we? Whoever wrote this editorial (I cannot find the author) said, as I stated above, “This story should not end until Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is gone, and the serious damage that has been done to the Justice Department is repaired.”

So was The New York Times being racist? After all, Mr. Gonzales is Hispanic. Think about it Mr. Savage and Mr. Holder.

How about members of the Congressional Black Caucus Mr. Holder and Mr. Savage? As Mr. Boyle and Michelle Fields report the feeling in the caucus is that the congressional investigation is warranted. So do they feel this way because Mr. Holder is an African American? Are they racists against their own race?

Of course Mr. Holder says he thinks it has more to do with his political ideology. No Mr. Holder. We don’t care you’re a Democrat. If you didn’t know about Operation Fast and Furious then why aren’t you outraged? Why aren’t you firing those who are responsible for the operation? Why aren’t you cleaning house? Why aren’t you outraged that the people who started this operation haven’t been identified? Why aren’t you outraged that when people found out about Operation Fast and Furious (including your second in command) did nothing to stop it and more importantly did not tell you? I can’t speak for the others, but the fact it appears you don’t care something like this happened bothers me a lot.

Mr. Savage has not done his research because he says (bold my emphasis):

“Some accused him of perjury; others floated theories that the operation was intended to go bad so as to build a case for stronger gun-control laws and called the Holder Justice Department an accessory to murder.”

Um, Mr. Savage, on December 7th Ms. Attkisson released a story about documents showing the ATF was using this operation to get stronger gun control laws. But I’m not shocked he doesn’t know about this. After all it seems the only time a mainstream media outlet writes on anything about Fast and Furious is when the AP writes about it. The AP has not written about these documents. By the way, Ms. Attkisson provides these emails in her article so Mr. Holder cannot say she conflated anything or left anything out.

Mr. Holder also thinks our “attacks” are payback because of Mr. Gonzales and John Ashcroft, George Bush’s other attorney general. No Mr. Holder. We’re holding you and the DOJ accountable for your actions the same way we did for Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Ashcroft. It doesn’t matter what your skin color is or your political leanings. When you do something wrong you should be held accountable. It’s that simple.

Again, it’s awful Mr. Savage just says a Border Patrol agent. Mr. Savage, that agent had a name. His name was Brian Terry. He was a son, brother, nephew, uncle, and godfather. He was a Marine veteran. More importantly he was an American citizen murdered with a gun from this operation on American soil.

Don't forget Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.

- Entertainment Weekly: Republicans and Democrats watch different things.

Republicans don’t watch MTV’s Jersey Shore. But they dig ABC’s Castle.

Democrats don’t like Discovery’sDeadliest Catch. But they swoon for NBC’s Parks and Recreation.

Those are a few of the findings from an annual research survey by Experian-Simmons that measures the consumer preferences of various political ideologies. In a report prepared exclusively for EW, the company calculated some of the favorite — and least favorite — TV shows of political partisans. (Specifically: the report measures which shows among the survey group were watched by the highest concentration of self-identified “Liberal Democrats” and “Conservative Republicans.”)

I will tell you right now, this is a load of crap. I’m a conservative who votes Republican and I like to watch “Jersey Shore.” I’m not proud of it and I cringe whenever Snooki says she’s a “Republican” because I think “Why. WHY do YOU have to be on my side?” but it’s entertaining. I always think “So this is how the other half lives.” The other half being drunk, skanky bros and bro-itas. I also watch “Aqua Teen Hunger Force,” so no, I won’t let Dems claim that.

I’m also completely not shocked that Democrats like to watch “The View.” Conservatives, for their part, like to watch things that require a brain for interest. Things like “Mythbusters.” Of course, they watch “Swamp People,” too. Hey, SO WOULD I and I’m going to now that I know there exists a show about people from the swamp.

- Lefty blogger at Washington Post: OWS is dead:

In nearby Freedom Plaza, there are fewer tents than there were earlier in fall — and itwasn’t exactly booming then. When Browne, the 63-year-old singer and activist, walked to the microphones, there were all of 125 people to listen to the performance, including a media pack of about 40.

“You are the 99 percent!” Browne, in leather jacket, blue jeans and Salomon athletic shoes, told the modest crowd. “This is what democracy looks like.”

But this is not what a mass movement looks like.

[...]

A German reporter asked Browne if he thought the Occupy movement needed its own song. “You don’t need a new song for the movement,” he said. “It’s got plenty of songs. It just needs people to show up and sing.”

He’s right. But where are they?

OWS was already dead but then this happened:

And then the music died. And then it came back! (At the time of this posting Miley’s video only had 517k views. You’d think a big celebrity like her would have more or that all of those mathematically-challenged progressives would gobble up the attention. Even hobos have some musical standards.)

And then some dude my hippie parents listened to showed up and bored the crowd to tears with songs he’d forget while playing.

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Tis the season for buying books for your loved ones and as always the The New York Times Sunday Book Review is here to help. And as always the Sunday Book Review is there to help us understand that anything from the right side of the aisle, especially the tea party, is to be put in the worst possible light at all times.

So, what is it this time? Book reviewer Kevin Boyle lets us all know that he thinks that the folks of the tea partymovement are somehow just like the Ku Klux Klan. Nice, huh? That’ll get the holiday season started right!

In his Sunday book review Boyle reviews a pair of books actually on the KKK — meaning that for the first time bringing up the KKK in a New York Times article isn’t wholly gratuitous. So he has that going for him, which is nice.

But what was totally gratuitous was the way in which Boyle opened his review, slamming by inference the entire tea party and analogizing it to a modern day KKK:

Imagine a political movement created in a moment of terrible anxiety, its origins shrouded in a peculiar combination of manipulation and grass-roots mobilization, its ranks dominated by Christian conservatives and self-proclaimed patriots, its agenda driven by its members’ fervent embrace of nationalism, nativism and moral regeneration, with more than a whiff of racism wafting through it.

No, not that movement. The one from the 1920s, with the sheets and the flaming crosses and the ludicrous name meant to evoke a heroic past. The Invisible Empire of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, they called it. And for a few years it burned across the nation, a fearsome thing to behold.

Yeah, because today’s era and the tea party are so dang similar to the KKK and the era of the 1920s, right? What is a more natural fit, anyway? What left-winger could doubt Boyle’s hatemongering?

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Michele Bachmann was the first GOP presidential candidate to demand Eric Holder’s resignation. Last Monday Rick Perry published an op-ed in The Washington Times demanding Mr. Holder’s resignation and yesterday morning Jon Huntsman also remarked that Mr. Holder should resign, yet the majority of the Old Media ignore them and the other congressmen who think Mr. Holder should resign.

There is no excuse from the Old Media we should accept, especially since Mr. Perry’s op-ed appears in The Washington Times. The Old Media can deny it all they want, but we all know if this was a GOP administration they would be contacting every single Democrat politician and reporting anyone calling for the attorney general to resign.

Wait a minute. They already did! Oh yes: Remember my previous articles comparing coverage of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Mr. Holder? That’s right. The Old Media was reporting on Mr. Gonzales so much in 2007 even I was sick of it and that’s when I was still a super liberal.

Politico gave a report on May, 20 2007 when Nancy Pelosi joined in: ”The nation cannot have a chief law enforcement officer whose candor and judgment are in serious question,” Pelosi said. “The president should restore credibility to the office of the attorney general. Alberto Gonzales must resign.” Why hasn’t she said the same thing about Mr. Holder? Of course Politico included the Republicans who thought Mr. Gonzales should go. I can’t imagine how happy that made them.

Look what I found! Then Senator Barack Obama calls for Mr. Gonzales to step down! I think someone should replay this to President Obama because he could apply his answer to Mr. Holder now.

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Much of the bias of the mainstream media is not demonstrated by what they say but by what they omit. During the past four years there have plenty of examples of such media silence. Remember: the media ignored candidate Obama’s relationship with seedy figures such as terrorist Bill Ayers, Communist scholar/pedophile Frank Marshall Davis and hid the fact the future president’s first political office was won in part by earning the support of the Marxist New Party.

Protecting Barack Obama is not the only reason for the mainstream media to omit elements of a story, but protecting the President’s progressive agenda is usually involved.

Take for example this week’s release of a new batch of “climategate” emails.  This batch is from around the same time as the first set, leaked two years ago, and they feature the same cast of scientists such as Michael Mann, Phil Jones, Ben Santer, Tom Wigley, Kevin Trenberth, and Keith Briffa, who starred in the first set.  Scientists admit in these emails that the evidence behind man made global warming is paper thin, and the apocalyptic climate story is being pushed for political rather than environment reasons. There is even evidence of US and British government involvement in covering up evidence disproving the global warming story.

One would expect news such as this to become banner headlines across the country’s biggest papers.  Those expectations would not be met. The NY Times small story in its environmental column.  While someone seriously covering the story would post some of the controversial exchanges, the Times paraphrased some of them and concluded by explaining it was much ado about nothing:

Gavin A. Schmidt, a climate modeler at NASA, said he found such exchanges unremarkable. He noted that difficulties in modeling were widely acknowledged and disclosed in the literature. Indeed, such problems are often discussed at scientific meetings in front of hundreds of people.

Of the new release of e-mails, Dr. Schmidt said, “It smacks of desperation.”

Dr. Mann said he hoped the fresh release, apparently first posted to a computer server in Russia, would provide new clues for the British police as they seek to catch the hacker or hackers.

“Who are the criminals?” he asked. “Who is funding this effort, not just to steal these materials but to promote them?”

Time Magazine reported on the scandal by ignoring the bulk of the emails and calling it a ”weak sequel.” Interestingly it seems as if Health and Science reporter Bryan Walsh didn’t read any of the emails himself, but simply reported what others said before concluding that thy contained nothing new. Just like the NY Times, by omitting a broad selection of the emails, Time Magazine skewed the story.

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“The national media, which lens a little to the left I could argue …”

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Fifty-two Congressmen, including Representative and GOP presidential candidate Michele Bachmann, are demanding Attorney General Eric Holder’s resignation over Operation Fast and Furious. While the new media has reached out to Congress, there is still no excuse for the Old Media to not say anything, especially since these Congressmen held a press conference Tuesday, November 15.

Then again, are you shocked NBC Nightly News and ABC World News didn’t cover the press conference? We know all year Mr. Williams and Ms. Sawyer have never mentioned Operation Fast and Furious once. If they covered the press conference they’d be forced to talk and explain Operation Fast and Furious. I’m disappointed CBS didn’t run a story on the press conference, but since they’ve been on top of the story I’m willing to forgive them. Here are some topics NBC and ABC thought were more important than congressmen calling for Mr. Holder’s resignation:

• Low cost Lipitor!
• Annie Leibovitz says go iPhone!
• Texas court says dogs have sentimental value
• ACL injuries
• New Kennedy tapes

They will do anything to avoid talking about Operation Fast and Furious. Like Cam Edwards said they’d run an entire 30 minute show on Brian Williams and puppies before they talk about Fast & Furious. (more…)

Let’s give Mr. Alter some props. He answered my email. Granted, it took awhile but he did respond. Here’s his response. It’s not bad until the end. You’ll see what I mean.

Hi, Mary:
Yes, I would tell you and Brian Terry’s family that Operation Fast and Furious was not a scandal. It was bad public policy that went horribly awry, with tragic consequences. It was a big blunder, a fiasco and maybe some other adjectives you and I could agree on, but not a “scandal” as conventionally defined. If you believe it’s a scandal, which to my mind connotes intentional wrongdoing for financial or personal (sometimes sexual gain), than you must include other huge policy mistakes under your definition.

So I assume you are willing to agree that the Bush Administration’s failure to recognize in advance that Saddam Hussein didn’t possess WMD was a scandal (removing Saddam’s WMD was the explicitly-stated purpose of the war). That intelligence failure led to an unnecessary war and the death of thousands. Many veterans of the Bush Administration have agreed that the war, like Operation Fast and Furious, was a case of good intentions gone horribly wrong.”Stuff happens,” as Donald Rumsfeld put it.

But those unfortunate, even tragic, things are not the stuff of scandal, unless they involved stealing by contractors and the like. As it happens, I was a supporter of the war initially, then criticized its conduct. But knowing that President Bush genuinely believed WMD to be present (In the same way Eric Holder genuinely believed the U. S. government could track guns through that straw purchase program, which had begun under Bush), I never called the Iraq War a scandal. Did you?  I didn’t think so.

If you are motivated by anything beyond sheer malice toward the President of the United States you will agree with the logic of this post. In any event, please feel free to share it with your readers.

Warm regards, Jonathan Alter

I thought it was an okay response until the last part and he shot himself in the foot. If my supposed “sheer malice” for President Obama is blinding me then couldn’t I say Mr. Alter’s total devotion to President Obama is blinding him?

To Mr. Alter a scandal is intentional wrongdoing for financial or personal gain. The Department of Justice didn’t tell the Mexican government about Operation Fast & Furious. Could someone please explain to me how that doesn’t count as intentional wrongdoing? How does anyone think it’s right or a good thing to arm already dangerous drug cartels? How were they going to track the guns without anyone knowing on the other side or tracking devices in the guns?! No attempt was made at the border to confiscate the guns. The DOJ purposely did not tell the Mexican government. They didn’t inform the Mexican government because they wanted this operation fail. Operation Fast & Furious was doomed from the beginning. Eric Holder never believed they could track guns through the straw purchase program. If he did there would be tracking devices in the guns and the Mexican government would be involved. If you think about it the only way for the guns to be tracked would be to find them at crime scenes.

Another reason why Operation Fast & Furious is a scandal under Mr. Alter’s definition: the push for gun control laws. Let’s just say everything Mr. Alter and Mr. Holder has said is 100% true. It’s still a scandal because now the DOJ and some in Congress are using Operation Fast & Furious as a way to push for more gun control. They’re using this situation for personal and political gains. The New York Times concentrated on that one part of Mr. Holder’s testimony!

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Sunday night, CBS aired an edition of “60 Minutes” that took a rare look at corruption in Washington on both sides of the aisle. It even took a book by a conservative journalist and Big Peace editor, Peter Schweizer’s Throw Them All Out, as the basis for its investigations.

Yet as Noel Sheppard of NewsBusters points out, “60 Minutes” “cherry picked” Republican examples from Schweizer’s book–so much so that four out of the five targets of its investigation were Republican, even though “60 to 70 percent” of the politicians described in Schweizer’s book are Democrats.

Eighty percent Republican was still too much for Politico, whose journalists appear on the majority of daily shows on the far-left, hyper-partisan MSNBC network, according to a Daily Caller report today. The Washington-based political digest panned the CBS story.

Nevertheless, CBS seems to have revealed that a 4-to-1 ratio of Republican to Democrat targets is the minimum threshold that a mainstream media outlet must reach before it exposes massive corruption in Washington. (more…)

I need to thank my friend Sean Arther for bringing this to my attention on Twitter. (Thank you!) He read my article on Dana Milbank, an op-ed columnist for The Washington Post, who claims Operation Fast and Furious is not a scandal. He remembered the intense media coverage in November 2000 when someone leaked George Bush’s 1976 DUI arrest. The media coverage was so intense that the LA Times ran an article about the coverage. One part caught my eye. [bold my emphasis]

Only a few major dailies–among them the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun and the Dallas Morning News–considered it front-page news. Others, such as the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times, mentioned the arrest on Page One but ran a full story inside.

Editors at the Washington Post initially decided to keep the story inside. But they changed course as the story gathered steam during the night on the news wires.

“In the end, after a lot of discussion back and forth, . . . I decided that this was front-page news pure and simple,” said Executive Editor Leonard Downie. Bush’s acknowledgment that he had withheld the information, Downie said, “struck me as a newsworthy decision, to not disclose this when there was a long-standing issue about his personal conduct in the past.“

Interesting! Let me see if I have this right. A DUI arrest from 1976 deserves the front page. A federal funded operation that has resulted in the death of hundreds, including federal agents, does not deserve the front page.

Wait, what? I don’t see the logic. (more…)

Protection from the activist old media when scandal hits is a great deal when you can get it.

Political figures know that a Republican who sneezes sideways gets blasted non-stop, and a Democrat can stand on top of the local Clock Tower picking off the public with a high-powered rifle and the people will be blamed for getting in the way of the bullets.

This is the way the game is played, and everybody in the media and in politics knows it. Fortunately, the public is becoming more aware of this all the time.

You think I’m being extreme? Take the case of former New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine.

Corzine ran MF Global. That company just filed for bankruptcy, meaning investors have lost as much as $700 million dollars. Corzine is a Democrat–a big Democrat. It’s hard to find that fact in the stories being done on the collapse of MF Global, if Corzine’s name is even mentioned at all. Democrat Corzine may have also transferred investors’ funds days before the collapse to avoid detection by authorities. If this were a Republican, Joe Biden would call this a big ‘effin deal.

Good Morning America ran the story this week on the collapse of MF Global. It was all of 14 seconds long and Corzine’s name was left out. Whoops–didn’t have time to fit that in. Forget mentioning he was a big, lib Democrat, he got the luxury of his name being totally ignored. Hey, it’s a great deal when you can get it. (more…)