If you know anything about my background at all, you know I’m a liberal. I’ve been posting stories about the  Pigford scandal here on BigGov and my usual haunt, the Huffington Post. I’ve worked for MoveOn.org and Brave New Films. I voted for Obama although like many progressives, I’m not thrilled with him.

Ah, why don’t conservatives love Conor Friedersdorf? He is one of us, is he not? He even wants to help Andrew Breitbart – and even us poor little old folks here at Big Journalism. Things here would be fine with a little free counseling from Friedersdorf, who, as Features Editor, helped run website Culture 11 into the ground in record time, ” its lifespan was like one of those bugs that hatches, mates, and dies in just a few days,” wasting millions in the process. Oh, the unaccomplished Conor Friedersdorf was still in grad school in 2008. But he knows it all. I suppose the boy learns quick.

When I criticize Mr. Breitbart, or his sites Big Hollywood, Big Government and Big Journalism, part of my project is pressuring them to do better work. In fact, I’d happily provide my counsel to anyone at those sites privately and free of charge, and I think that much of the critiques I’ve published thus far are constructive.

Here is Conor Friedersdorf posting on Andrew McCarthy. Friedersdorf defends the Marxist Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), while calling McCarthy “ridiculous,” “dishonorable,” “odious” and “terrifying” as a public servant, dismissing his arguments as specious and simply slurs. He also defends the Left, while reviewing McCarthy’s book with this headline: “The Manifold Inaccuracies of Andy McCarthy’s New Book.” Why don’t conservatives love Conor Friedersdorf? (more…)

The Chronicle of Higher Education, in the course of a long profile about disgraced professor Michael Bellesiles, has this to say about his latest whopper:

Then, after I interviewed him, Mr. Bellesiles published an essay in The Chronicle Review. In the piece, which seemed innocuous enough, he writes about a student in his military-history class at Central Connecticut State whose brother was killed in Iraq. The essay is about how real life intrudes on the classroom, how teachers must be sensitive to what’s going on in the lives of their students.

One of his old critics, James Lindgren, then wrote a post on the group blog The Volokh Conspiracy. Mr. Lindgren, a professor of law at Northwestern University, had searched through the records of military deaths and couldn’t find one that matched the description in Mr. Bellesiles’s essay. Other bloggers piled on, including Glenn Reynolds, of Instapundit, and Megan McArdle, of The Atlantic. The title of one post, “Is Bellesiles At It Again?,” conveys the tenor of the response.

Like Mr. Lindgren, I couldn’t find any military records that matched the details in the essay. I contacted the teaching assistant for the class, who confirmed Mr. Bellesiles’s version of events, saying that the student had seemed distressed and had told him that his brother was killed in either Iraq or Afghanistan. I had a brief conversation with the student, who told me the brother’s name and said he was in the Army. I then spoke with an Army official, who searched a database containing the names of all service members killed in Iraq or Afghanistan. The name didn’t come up.

In an e-mail exchange I then had with the student, he admitted that he had lied about some of the details he told Mr. Bellesiles, the teaching assistant, and, later, me. It wasn’t his brother but rather a friend who had died in Afghanistan. He explained the situation in more detail, but I’m going to keep those details private. Exposing him doesn’t seem right, even if his credibility is questionable.

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By some ironic twist of fate, the Senator from the Ku Klux Klan has died on the same day the Supreme Court — by a distressingly narrow 5-4 ruling — affirmed that the Second Amendment is incorporated, via the 14th Amendment, to the states, and that Chicago’s gun ban is therefore unconstitutional. In part, the ruling rested on the historical fact that African Americans were denied gun ownership in many places following Reconstruction, and thus were not fully free:

Glenn Reynolds, the Instapundit, who has written extensively on the Second Amendment, has just posted his reactions:

OKAY, having quickly skimmed the McDonald opinion, a few thoughts…

… it really is interesting how much emphasis the majority, and Justice Thomas’s concurrence, put on the racist roots of gun control. See this article and this one by Bob Cottrol and Ray Diamond for more background. And isn’t it interesting that this is happening on the same day the Senate’s last Klansman went to his reward?

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Instapundit, naturally, has the roundup from all of today’s Tea Parties:

Click, go, scroll, comment.  The floor is all yours. We’ll be up all night, as usual…

With a whiff of nostalgia, I can imagine the old time journalist with the smell of coffee and cigarettes wafting through the click and clang of the typewriter.   Fifty years ago, a “journalist” had the ring of a dispassionate, creative, honest, fair, and trusted detective/storyteller.  Fifty years ago, if you graduated from an accredited journalism school, you were presumed “unbiased.”  Much as the physician takes an oath that she will “first, do no harm,” the “journalist” title meant that you were first, unbiased and balanced. Neutrality in the story was as necessary as it was assumed.

Sometime between half a century ago and today, something went very, very wrong.

We can speculate on what the “something” was, but we may never know for sure.  Much like the wind blows, there is no discernible source, but still we know it blows. Journalism became slanted to the left to the degree that the right had almost no voice by the mid-1980s.   Almost no voice, until Rush Limbaugh came on the scene.  Almost 30 years later, the tables have turned.  The problem for these journalists is that they have functioned robotically and cavalierly for so long, that they are not aware of the reality around them.  Things have changed. Drastically. (more…)

Courtesy of the great Instapundit, Glenn Reynolds, and PJTV comes this lovely interview with the face of the next generation of conservatives, Lyda Loudon, who’s all of fourteen years old.  The interview was conducted during the recent National Tea Party Convention in Nashville as part of the new Tea Party TV.

And don’t miss Glenn’s latest Insta-column about the Tea Parties in today’s Wall Street Journal.  Be sure to read the whole thing:

Tea partiers are still angry at federal deficits, at Washington’s habit of rewarding failure with handouts and punishing success with taxes and regulation, and the general incompetence that has marked the first year of the Obama presidency. But they’re no longer depressed.

Instead, they seem energized. And surprisingly media savvy. William Temple donned colonial dress knowing that it would be an irresistible lure to TV cameras. When the cameras trained on him, he regaled interviewers with well-informed discussion of constitutional history. Other attendees were hawking DVDs, books, and Web sites promoting tea-party ideals, while discussing the use of tools like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter for political organizing. (more…)

Via Instapundit, this picture of you-know-who at the you-know-what.

So… what do you think of the Divine Sarah?  The floor is now open for discussion.