Here in Annapolis, Maryland, local, state, and national media remained silent while Democrats in the General Assembly quietly overrode no less than three vetos by Republican Governor Bob Ehrlich, making Maryland’s voting laws the least transparent and most liberal in the nation. From local and state news sources, not a word was breathed. From the national media, including, even, Fox News… Nothing!

Only author and WSJ columnist John Fund seems to have noted Maryland’s radical moves towards their new “vote early and often” elections policy. As Fund aptly notes:

It should normally be difficult to pick the worst state legislature in America, but Maryland’s is way out in front. First it overrode GOP Gov. Bob Ehrlich’s veto of a special health-care tax on Wal-Mart. Democratic legislators then passed three election-related bills and again mustered the necessary three-fifths votes to overturn his vetoes. Together the election laws would so weaken safeguards against voter fraud as to make Maryland the nation’s prime example of Election Day irresponsibility.

The gravity of the changes is causing dismay, and not just for the governor. A bipartisan state advisory commission headed by the revered George Beall, the former U.S. attorney who convicted Spiro Agnew of tax evasion, had urged legislators to sustain the Ehrlich vetoes…

Blair Lee IV, the son of a former Democratic governor who is supporting an Ehrlich opponent this year, questions why Democrats are “pushing through such dangerous election laws opposed by nonpartisan election officials.” He warns his party that “nothing is more important than the integrity of elections–not even defeating the Republicans in November.”

But partisan tensions are now at flood level in Annapolis. Mr. Ehrlich, the first GOP governor in four decades, claims some Baltimore Sun writers are so unfair he won’t cooperate with them. For his part, State Senate President Mike Miller boasted this month to his caucus that “we’re going to shoot [Republican leaders] down. We’re going to bury them face down in the ground, and it’ll be 10 years before they crawl out again.” Startled Republicans hope to collect 50,000 signatures calling for a November referendum on one or more of the election bills, a move that would block them from taking effect until after a vote.

Other than Mr. Fund’s enlightening article and a brief mention of these and other Maryland legislative issues in a Washington Times Op Ed, the media has remained nearly silent. The only other mention to be found was an article written by Richard Hasen in Slate Magazine. In his article, Mr. Hasen focused a great deal of his energy on bashing Republicans for enacting “election reform on a partisan basis” — i.e., enacting voter identification laws — but makes the briefest of mentions — about two sentences — regarding the changes wrought in Maryland. Mr. Hasen, whose article was nearly 1500 words long, would say only this of Maryland’s election changes:

(And it should be noted that Republicans are not the only ones who know how to enact election reform on a partisan basis. Witness the controversy over Maryland’s new election reforms.)

Truly, Mr. Hasen’s mention of Maryland’s controversial liberalization of its voting laws is the merest of afterthoughts. What Mr. Hasen fails to do, however, is note that these so-called “reforms” were obtained only after overriding Governor Ehrlich’s vetos three times in a one-month period! Mr. Hasen also fails to note that Democrats in Maryland may soon be overriding the Governor a fourth time as they push through their next so-called “election reform” bill, which allows convicted criminals to register and vote in Maryland immediately after being released from jail.

At least, though, it can be said of Mr. Hasen, a Loyola Law School professor, that he took some notice of changes being made in Maryland. The question now remains, what about the rest of the media? And it is appropriate to question the integrity of local Maryland media on this issue, even above the national media. After all, many issues aired by the national media come directly from local and state news sources.

So, why the virtual white-out of such an important issue, one which many Maryland Democrats are likely to care about as well? Why does the media not even take the time to praise Maryland’s GA for it’s heroic override of three gubernatorial vetos?

If one were to Google the issue of “election reform” as it relates to “Republican efforts” throughout the US, you would find no shortage of media attention, at every level. But this effort, here in Maryland, as ground-breaking and earth-shattering as it is, is a non-event in the eyes of the media.

This is not just a simple oversight on their part. After all, quite a few journalists and media establishments have called for exactly these kinds of “reforms,” especially after the 2000 and 2004 elections. Well, Maryland’s GA has done exactly that, and, in the process overrode 14 other gubernatorial vetos, just in January of this year.

Where’s the outrage? Where’s the praise? Where in the world are the heroic men and women of the media?

Developing…

Why?

Why, over a weekend so full of news regarding important issues, such as Al Gore’s disgraceful speech in Jeddah, or the growing strength of the American economy, or even the troubling issue of Iran’s decision to go forward with their uranium enrichment process — defying the UN in a direct manner – has the press chosen to obsess over a minor hunting accident?  How obsessed is the MSM over this story?  Here’s an example for you:

NBCNEWS chief White House correspondent David Gregory warned President Bush’s spokesman on Monday not to be a “jerk!”

The heated exchange came during a press gathering at the White House.

Gregory asked White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan about the Cheney hunting accident.

‘David, hold on, the cameras aren’t on right now,’ McClellan replied. ‘You can do this later.’

‘Don’t accuse me of trying to pose to the cameras,’ Gregory said, voice rising. ‘Don’t be a jerk to me personally when I’m asking you a serious question.’

‘You don’t have to yell,’ McClellan said.

‘I will yell,” said Gregory, pointing a finger at McCellan (sic) at his dais. ‘If you want to use that podium to try to take shots at me personally, which I don’t appreciate, then I will raise my voice, because that’s wrong.’

‘Calm down, Dave, calm down,’ said McClellan.

‘I’ll calm down when I feel like calming down,’ Gregory said. ‘You answer the question.’

‘I have answered the question,’ said McClellan, who had maintained that the vice president’s office was in charge of getting the information out and worked with the ranch owner to do that. ‘I’m sorry you’re getting all riled up about.’

‘I am riled up,’ Gregory said, ‘because you’re not answering the question.’”

Now, a heated exchange over Congress’ new budget — where deep cuts have been proposed — would be completely understandable and likely even welcomed by many NBC viewers.  But an argument over THIS?  Worse is the fact that the MSM seems rankled that it took about a day before they were notified.  To hear some tell the story, you would think they had found their new Watergate at last.

Yup!  It’s “Shotgun-Gate.”  You have to go with “Shotgun-gate” you know, because it kills two birds with one stone – Sorry Mr. Vice President, I couldn’t resist – in that it embarrasses the Bush Administration AND takes a whack at gun ownership. 

But all kidding aside, again I ask the question: WHY?  Why does the MSM obsess on this kind of stuff?

I blame Bill Clinton!

Which I say partly tongue in cheek. But there is an undercurrent of truth in regards to the weird behavior seen in recent years from the MSM.

What weird behavior am I referring to?  I refer to what seems to me to be an outright lust on the part of the MSM for scandal.  Yes, we’ve had scandal rags for decades, even centuries now, but this scandal-lust has shifted it’s focus in the past decade to politics and political figures.

And this is no minor matter when one considers that the combined might of the MSM, with an army of aggressive investigative journalists, is a formidable force for or against any issue it chooses to champion.  So, why does the MSM want to unleash its might over a minor accident?

I guess it goes back to the two rules the MSM seems to follow quite religiously:

1. Make money at all costs.  This is, of course, the Capitalist imperative.  This, at least, I can comprehend.
2. Highlight the negative.  Blood and scandal sells, and it’s great when it hurts conservatives at the same time.

As you’ll see, rule number 1 explains why the MSM will sometimes aggressively pursue someone like Bill Clinton and rule number 2 explains why we see constant news cycles, day-after-day, month-after-month, and year-after-year, highlighting anything that hurts Republicans in general and the Bush Administration in particular.  But this doesn’t give us the whole picture because, in my opinion, something significant happened during the Clinton presidency that has exacerbated this trend.

The fact is, the Internet isn’t the only thing that boomed during Clinton’s two terms in office; the media boomed as well. And this, in my opinion, was due in large part because of all the scandals which the Clinton Administration seemed to spawn across it’s eight years in Washington.  It’s a pretty impressive list of major and minor scandals, almost all of which were followed obsessively by liberal and conservative audiences alike.  Let me try and name just a few:

FEMALE-RELATED SCANDALS:
-Jennifer Flowers
-Paula Jones
-Juanita Broderick
-Kathleen Willey
-Monica Lewinsky

BUSINESS/POLITICALLY-RELATED SCANDALS:
-Whitewater
-Travelgate
-Filegate
-Pardongate
-Trashing of The White House

And this list is in no way exhaustive. Liberals in the media loved Bill Clinton, both for his liberal views and for his ability to get into just enough trouble to keep audiences focused on the media reports of his ‘indiscretions’ yet not enough trouble to get himself kicked out of office - though, it was close.

Furthermore, the Clinton Administration had more leaks in it than the Titanic. It was “all leaks, all the time.”  And the MSM fed off of those leaks, using them to titillate their audiences on a daily basis.

But when Bush came to the White House, most of that stopped. And when the leaks stopped, the media began to suffer the same kind of recession that had already begun to hit the dot coms. Media ad sales fell dramatically, leaks were almost non-existent, and President Bush kept his nose scrupulously clean.

Yes, the man who burst the media bubble was none other than George W Bush himself.  And how do you think the MSM felt about THAT?

So, of course, the tone of the media regarding the new administration was to criticize the “wall of silence” that seemed to surround the Bush White House. The thinking from liberals in the media was, of course, “there must be something really sinister going on if they are unwilling to communicate with us.”

Of course, the MSM has found ways to obtain leaks.  Most of them seem to have come from administration critics – Clinton appointees, Democrats who are government employees, even members of Congress — to gain access to and to disseminate information they hope will damage the administration.  Unfortunately, the MSM is SO obsessed with embarrassing and/or hurting the President, they have ignored the relentless damage they are doing to our national security.  I think it can be reasonably argued that, in the past few years, the MSM has used its sources to reverse almost all the progress the Bush Administration has made in the war on terror, with the exception of the astounding progress that American troops have made in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Furthermore, when you look at investigations launched more because of media demands for one — can you say ‘Valerie Plame’?  I knew you could! — than out of any substantiate issue, it becomes quite clear that a good number of so-called scandals are media-generated. 

And here is a key point…  In the last decade, the MSM has moved from ”Investigative Journalism” to “Adversarial Journalism.” 

Yes, I know, duhhhh!  But the seeds of adversarial journalism were sewn during the Clinton presidency.  Perhaps this is because the MSM was able to translate presidential scandal into greater ad sales and increased audience attention.  The end result being that, by the time President Bush assumed office, the MSM’s focus on political scandal was much more intense.  Which led to an interesting problem for the MSM.  

You can accuse President Bush of being many things, but titillating is NOT one of them.  Where President Clinton seemed constantly embroiled in scandals related to his womanizing behavior, there has never been so much as a whisper of such a thing for President Bush. 

In addition, while the Clinton Administration was an eight-year-long leak-fest, the Bush Administration is very tight-lipped, with very few leaks to the media.  Is it any wonder then, that, if the scandal-lusting MSM couldn’t find scandal in order to fulfill rules 1 & 2, they would seek to manufacture some?   I think it makes perfect sense. 

The “Mother-of-All-Ironies,” however, is the fact that the scandal-addicted MSM which had a bounty of leaks during the Clinton presidency and never issued a single complaint about any of them, is now trying to parse leaks from the Bush Administration.  Read and/or listen carefully to what most of the MSM is saying and what you’ll hear is something along the lines of:

Top-secret leaks which we obtain — regardless of whether they damage national security — are good!  Leaks which come voluntarily from the Bush Administration are bad. 

Why?  Because, of course, the Bush Administration is going to disseminate information to bolster it’s case, where involuntary leaks are more likely to hurt the president.  The MSM considers voluntary leaks from the Bush Administration to be attempts to “manipulate the press.”  Leaks which the press obtains on it’s own, no matter their sensitivity, is simply the MSM “doing it’s job.”  Or so we are told.

The rules were quite different during the Clinton Administration, of course.  But, that too is in keeping with the MSM’s unwritten rules.

This is going to be controversial. But it’s not what you might expect.

In an article written earlier today by Benny Morris and published by the UK’s Guardian Unlimited newspaper, famous historian and civil rights activist John Hope Franklin had this to say regarding his home:

“This country is so arrogant, so self-certain,” he says, asked whether the west is now engaged with the Muslim world in a war of civilisations. “I am not sure that is what we are confronting. [But I am also] not sure we have done what we ought to have done to cultivate the rest of the world. We’re so powerful and so presumptuous that it makes us unattractive, almost unbecoming. We don’t treat other countries and people right. Power without grace is a curse.”

The article goes on to say that:

Franklin is also fierce in his opposition to the war in Iraq. “I don’t see any good reason why we went in there or why we are there now. The invasion has sullied our reputation as has our behaviour there. We have undertaken to spread democracy when we ourselves are not democratic.”

America not democratic - how so?

“Our presidents are elected by electoral colleges, not directly. And our military is not democratic. There’s no draft. Bush’s children and my children do not serve.” He points out that those who do serve are mostly from America’s poorer classes, including many blacks, driven into the professional army by economic necessity. He suggests that the Bush administration keeps down the minimum wage to prompt the poor to volunteer for the (relatively) well-paid armed services.

Of course, prominent Americans who grant interviews to the foreign media, critisizing the US, is nothing new. This is, unfortunately, a common practice on both sides of the political spectrum.

With that said, this is not your typical, “let’s bash America” piece. Granted, it is described as a “Special Report” on the United States of America which, in actuality, is nothing more than a liberal opinion piece. At the same time, however, the who penned the interview is just as interesting as the man being interviewed.

Both the interviewer, Benny Morris, and the interviewee, John Hope Franklin, are prominent historians. Mr. Morris is an Israeli citizen and Mr. Franklin an American citizen, yet the article is published in a British newspaper. And in no way is Mr. Morris a regular contributing editor to the paper. I counted just about five articles written by Mr. Morris for the Guardian in the last five years.

If you delve into Mr. Morris’ background, you actually find that he is a self-proclaimed “new historian.” In Israel, that is simply a way of saying that he’s one of those historians who does not believe that the Jews claims to Israel are legitimate and tends to be a historical revisionist.

So here suddenly we have some fascinating parallels between Mr. Morris and Mr. Franklin:

• Both question the legitimacy of their governments
• Both see their governments as oppressors
• Both are harsh critics of their governments’ policies,
• And both stand firmly against the Iraq war.

In fact, it seems to me that both men express a common ideology, that of Folk Marxism:

Folk Marxism looks at political economy as a struggle pitting the oppressors against the oppressed. Of course, for Marx, the oppressors were the owners of capital and the oppressed were the workers. But folk Marxism is not limited by this economic classification scheme. All sorts of other issues are viewed through the lens of oppressors and oppressed. Folk Marxists see Israelis as oppressors and Palestinians as oppressed. They see white males as oppressors and minorities and females as oppressed. They see corporations as oppressors and individuals as oppressed. They see America as on oppressor and other countries as oppressed.

The folk Marxist view of Iraq is that the United States is the oppressor, and the groups fighting the United States are the oppressed. At the extreme, Michael Moore and Ted Rall have made explicit statements to this effect. However, even reporters in the mainstream media who are not openly supporting the enemy take this folk Marxist view when they refer to “the insurgency.”

Clearly, that bias is showing through in this article. And not just in this article. Read through so many other articles published by the MSM and I think you’ll see that this ideology dominates liberal thinking.

Unfortunately, too many liberals in the media try to dress up such opinion pieces and call them “news” so as to forward this ideology. Fortunately, the blogosphere is here to question such practices.

Just saw this in News.com.au:

IRAN’S largest selling newspaper announced today it was holding a contest on cartoons of the Holocaust in response to the publishing in European papers of caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed.

“It will be an international cartoon contest about the Holocaust,” said Farid Mortazavi, the graphics editor for Hamshahri newspaper - which is published by Teheran’s conservative municipality.He said the plan was to turn the tables on the assertion that newspapers can print offensive material in the name of freedom of expression.

“The Western papers printed these sacrilegious cartoons on the pretext of freedom of expression, so let’s see if they mean what they say and also print these Holocaust cartoons,” he said.

Where in the world has Mr. Mortazavi been for the past five or six decades?  Oh yeah, living in Iran under a repressive regime that would put him to death, or at least cut off his hands, should he deign to critique his own government or question Islam in any way.

Granted, the kooks seems to run all major institutions in Iran, but we have plenty of kooks here in the western world too.  We’ve had to tolerate offensive anti-Jew, anti-Christian media all our lives.  What will Mr. Mortazavi publish that has not been published before?

Mr. Mortazavi doesn’t even seem to understand that his silly contest will likely do nothing more than make Muslims in general look even worse than they already do after days of burning embassies, threatenting a “European 9/11,” etc.  But I’m sure he’ll go ahead anyway with his childish “contest” and ultimately publish a number of Holocaust cartoons.  Here is what you WON’T see happen when the cartoons go to press:

• Crowds of rioting Jews and Christians burning Iranian embassies.
• Demands for the murder of those who dared to create such offensive material.
• Jewish and Christian religious leaders inciting their followers to commit violent acts… of ANY kind.

You might see the cartoons reprinted so that the western press can highlight the extreme level of ignorance on display by the “Arab Media.”*  You might also see some religious and governmental leaders express their distaste.  You might even see a yawn or two from people like me who have had to tolerate such idiocy all their lives.
As Mr. Mortazavi stated in the article, this ridiculous contest is nothing more than a reaction to the one which took place in the Netherlands a few weeks ago.  I’ve said in a previous post that, yes, it was an ignorant thing to do…  Welcome to the free world!
And the western press is freer by far than the Arab Media*. Don’t believe me? Then read this:

Two Jordanian newspaper editors who published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad have been arrested.

Jihad Momani and Hisham Khalidi are accused of insulting religion under Jordan’s press and publications law.

Mr Momani was fired from the weekly Shihan after reproducing the cartoons - originally printed in Denmark - which have caused a global storm of protest.

This story is a perfect reflection of the double-standard imposed upon the world by many in the Muslim community.  They expect the world to know AND to be perfectly sensitive to their own religious mores, yet HAVE NO CLUE — or care for that matter — to learn even the least little bit about anyone else’s.

It reminds me of the time that that Taliban used AK 47’s to shoot up precious, irreplaceable Buddhist art that had been meticulously carved into the side of a mountain.   They destroyed it forever in a fit of religious extremism.
Which is why, when I hear of contests like this one, organized as a sort of tantrum-like response to the offensive behaviour of another, but one which is far worse than what precipitated their anger, it tells me that the people who work for this Iranian newspaper are child-like in their naivete.

My apologies for the run-on sentence.
—————————————–
* - This is an example of the “Arab Media” which al-Jazeera recently declared could soon rival western media in it’s dominance.

Let me jump briefly back to one of my posts from this past Friday:

So, in other words, the US media is not at an all-time low because of it’s liberal bias, but because it was too “pro-war” on the issue of Iraq. Yeahhhhh, righhhht!

You know, I’m a believer in competition. Let al-Jazeera compete head-on-head with the likes of CNN and Fox News. It’s freedom of the press on an international scale.

I wrote that in response to an article I had found in the Guardian Unlimited which reported that al-Jazeera hosted a transparently biased “conference” to critisize the US media for being too pro war! That alone is laughable, but if people at al-Jazeera think they are ready to take the US media on, they are sadly mistaken.

I never really said that in my last post, but this is certainly the case. I agree that the US media is at an all-time low. But it’s also at an all-time high, in the form of new competition from media companies such as Fox News, internet-based news services, and the Blogosphere.

And one shining example of the expansion and normalization of the Blogosphere could be seen today in Washington, as Pajamas Media and Powerline Blogger Paul Mirengoff took the opportunity to question Senators Kennedy and Durbin, both of whom soon grew too flustered to handle further questioning and fled the spotlight.

Here’s a bit of what happened as told by Paul himself:

Durbin presented the usual Democratic line, which assumes that the the intercept program violates FISA and proceeds from there. I pointed out that the Attorney General had just explained how FISA contains an exception for surveillance authorized by another act of Congress, and that (in Gonzales’ view) the congressional authorization of force (AUMF), by authorizing all means necessary to prevent another attack, provides authorization independent of FISA for the administration to listen to al Qaeda calls into the U.S. Durbin allowed that I had accurately recited the Attorney General’s argument.

I then asked why, if the Democrats disagree with the administration’s understanding of what AUMF authorizes, they don’t present clarifying legislation telling the administration that its interpretation is incorrect. This would enable the Senate to vote on whether it thinks listening to calls from al Qaeda to the U.S. is a necessary and proper measure to prevent another attack.

Apparently peeved at the thought of having to vote on that issue, Senator Durbin asked what organization I was with. I told him I was respresenting Power Line and Pajamas Media. Durbin said he wasn’t familiar with this group, and then proceeded to address my question. His answer was (I quote from memory) that “this is not how things work” and that (if I understood him correctly) the issue is whether the president’s actions are constitutional.

Here you can see the obvious difference between the way Paul questions Kennedy and Durbin and the kinds of softball questions these two normally receive from the media. For Paul, this was a great opportunity to get to the heart of a vital issue. For journalists in the MSM, this is their career, which won’t last very long if they press too hard on officials in Washington.

Remember CNN’s admission a few years back that, in order to continue to report “news” from Iraq they were forced to ignore the obvious atrocities that were going on there? Other news agencies admitted the same, and they’ve behaved in a similar manner in other repressive regions of the world.

Well, if they were willing to slant their coverage in Iraq to prevent being thrown out by the likes of Saddam, how much more likely is it that news organizations will slant coverage in order to remain in the good graces of those whom they admire in DC? Career liberals in Washington love career liberals in the MSM, and vice versa.

Which is why Democrats rarely face the kind of questioning that Kennedy and Durbin faced today. How did they react? They got the hell out of there; probably outraged that they should have to field tough questions from an outfit they never heard of before. I can imagine Kennedy’s reaction to staffers once he was back in his office:

“Who the hell was that?! Why wasn’t I warned about this? Who set this up for me?! This is an outrage! I’m a senior member of Congress, nobody treats me like that!!”

Okay, back to reality.

Definitely, this was a very telling moment. Today, the Open Source Media announced its arrival in Washington. I couldn’t be more thrilled, though, some liberal bloggers out there were less than happy with today’s result. Here are a few comments found posted to the Pajamas Media page where the video of a portion of the Q & A can be found:

CheezNCrackers Feb 6, 2006 02:09 PM

You guys all deserve to have Abu Gonzales justify Bushy declare himself “president for life”.

Bushy? How old are you? You sound like a pouting, petulant child that got on Mum and Dad’s computer.

Donzi Feb 6, 2006 06:36 PM

LizDexic

You had better be damn thankful, we aren’t Islamists. For if we were, your attitude and mouth, would have been on the floor, looking up at the rest of you…Now that truly is funny.

But then you seem just exactly the dhimmified kind of person, ‘they’ desire….and THAT fact is really hilarious.

Hmmmm… Is that last comment a threat? Sounds like this person should be working for al-Jazeera.

David

Muslims are protesting across the world, enraged at a series of cartoons depicting Mohammad in a manner they find offensive. One of the most frequently mentioned examples I’ve heard of is one where Mohammad is wearing a bomb for a turban.

I won’t publish it hear for obvious reasons. It is not my intention to insult anyone of the Islamic faith. Here is the Christian principle which addresses this kind of situation:

1 Corinthians 8:9 (New International Version)

Be careful, however, that the exercise of your freedom does not become a stumbling block to the weak.

Though this passage refers to the behaviour of one Christian to another, I think it also is appropriate that we respect the weakness of others and how our actions can negatively effect their thoughts, feelings, and behaviours. In this case, of course, I’m referring to Muslims’ unfortunate tendency toward anger and violence at what seems to me to be the least provocation. Here are some sad-but-true examples from a recent protest rally in London outside the Danish Embassy:

Okay, some ignorant people chose to insult Islam.  Is the answer to a small amount of ignorance REALLY violence on a global scale?

Freedom means giving others the freedom to be ignorant and answering back, not with violence, or ignorance, but with calm and reasoned explanation of why Muslims believe what they believe.   This is an opportunity for winning converts, instead, they are making non-Muslims across the world think twice about what kind of religion Islam really is.

Is Islam truly “a religion of peace”?  When I see such things, I have to wonder.

The Guardian Unlimited reported yesterday on a news forum which was organized by al-Jazeera, the arabic-language TV News organization based in Saudi Arabia whch has recently been preparing to move into international markets.

Arabic-language media have an unprecedented chance to take over as the world’s premier news source because trust in their US counterparts plummeted following their “shameful coverage” of the war in Iraq, a conference heard today.

The US media reached an “all-time low” in failing to reflect public opinion and Americans’ desire for trusted information, instead acting as a “cheerleader” for war, said Amy Goodman, the executive producer and host of US TV and radio news show Democracy Now!, at a news forum organised by al-Jazeera.

Newsweek’s Paris bureau chief, Christopher Dickey, said the US media were dying because of cutbacks and weren’t interested in covering the world outside America.

So, in other words, the US media is not at an all-time low because of it’s liberal bias, but because it was too “pro-war” on the issue of Iraq.  Yeahhhhh, righhhht!

You know, I’m a believer in competition.  Let al-Jazeera compete head-on-head with the likes of CNN and Fox News.  It’s freedom of the press on an international scale.

But for al-Jazeera to sponsor a news forum to declare that the US media is dying so as to promote it’s own stilted view of the world, that just takes the cake!  Here’s a message for al-Jazeera; if you REALLY want to become the world’s dominant source for news, don’t go around sponsoring forums which make you look pathetic and unprofessional.

The average blogger here in the US has more saavy than that.

One day after Samuel Alito’s official swearing in as the newest Supreme Court Justice, Alito did exactly what Senate Democrats and critics said he would never do, stick up for “the little guy.” It was Dana Milbank of the Washington Post who noted that:

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), hosting a morning roundtable with reporters, had nothing nice to say about Alito. “We here in the United States are not going to stand for monarchial tyranny,” he said, protesting Alito’s support for “unfettered, unlimited power of the executive.” He faulted Alito for belonging to a group that was “anti-black and also anti-women.” Kennedy wondered if “the average person is going to be able to get a fair shake” under Alito. [emphasis mine]

A similar sentiment was echoed over and over during the Alito hearings. “Alito is a man,” they kept saying, “who does not care about the ‘little guy,’” so to speak. And yet, which way did Alito vote in regards to his first case as a USSC Justice? Read for yourself:

WASHINGTON (CNN) — In his first day on the job, Justice Samuel Alito broke ranks Wednesday night with the Supreme Court’s conservatives by refusing to allow Missouri to execute death-row inmate Michael Taylor.

Alito sided with five other liberal and moderate justices in rejecting a second request to allow the state of Missouri to execute Taylor.

The justices voted 6-3 Wednesday night to turn down the last-minute request for a midnight execution. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas supported allowing the execution to proceed.

Now, the tone of most reports made by the media was that Alito had somehow voted to stop the execution. That is not the case. Rather, he voted against the nullification of a lower court decision which put a stay on the execution in the first place.

So, what are the implications of this interesting vote? I have no idea.

But I do know this, if you think that, somehow, Alito is a closet liberal who just outed himself, I think you’re in for a big surprise. After 15 years on an Appellate bench, Alito has a very clear track record of judicial conservatism.

And speaking of his old appelate job, Paul, from Powerlineblog.com reported this earlier today:

Yesterday, the Third Circuit issued three opinions written by Judge (now Justice) Alito. In one of them, Jensen v. Potter, the court reinstated a female postal worker’s claims of sexual harassment and retaliation. The district court had tossed the case out on summary judgment, but a unanimous Third Circuit reversed. Thus, the alleged victim will have her day in court.

I’m sorry, wasn’t Alito the man who was going to single-handedly destroy the rights of the common man here in the US?

Hmmm… I wonder. Maybe, all that stuff Senator Kennedy was spouting off before, during, and after the confirmation hearings was just a load of bull?

Nahhhhh!!

Still, I do wonder that very few others have taken note of this angle. In voting mostly along party lines when it came to Alito’s appointment, Democrats showed an extreme partisan streak that may well hurt them in the upcoming election cycle. Their primary excuse for this strong vote against Alito was based on their assertion that he does not seem overly focused on individual rights.

But we all know that, truly, this was just a cover story. It was all a way of saying without saying that the real concern has nothing to do with his rulings related to individual rights and everything to do with the possibility that he might one day rule against the Roe vs. Wade precedent.

All of the efforts made by Senate Democrats to “Bork” Alito flowed out of his possible stance against Roe vs. Wade. The same Democrats who used to complain, while Clinton was in office, that using a single issue as a “litmus test” for ANY federal judges was inappropriate have been, for the the past few years, doing exactly that.

Finally, everyone should understand that Senator Kerry’s last minute filibuster attempt, which failed miserably, was pre-planned from the start. Senate Democrats tried to “Bork” Alito, gave it their all, even managed to drive Alito’s wife to tears in their efforts to publicly smear him. But they never even came close to slowing down his nomination.

At the same time, angry-leftists were literally SCREAMING in frustration at Democrats, saying — unfairly in my opinion — that Senate Dems had not done nearly enough to hurt Alito and insisted that Alito be filibustered. But Senate Dems knew for sure that, were they to try a filibuster, Republicans would use the so-called “Nuclear” option, change the rules, and permanently eliminate this as an option for future federal judges.

So, what to do? They failed to even slow the nomination process for Alito, but a portion of their base that will be needed to help fund campaigns in 2006 and 2008 were threatening to pull their support. They couldn’t filibuster without losing that option forever, but NOT using the option would mean a financial loss at a time where DNC funds were at a critically low level.

The solution, if you ask me, was ingenious. Democrats let the process get far enough along to allow Senate Dems time to declare their support for, or opposition to Alito in the upcoming vote, then, on the day of the vote, they try a last-minute, poorly coordinated filibuster, guaranteed to fail.

But, at least now Senate Dems like Kennedy and Kerry can say they did everything they could to stop Alito’s confirmation, hopefully preserving the much needed support of groups such as MoveOn.org.

Yeah, I know, it sounds very conspiritorial. Really, though, it’s a reasonable move, all things considered. Senate Dems really did give this their all, sinking to new lows, if you ask me, in their attempts to tar someone who had the enthusiastic support of both liberal and conservative judges, as well as the highest rating from the ABA, on top of his vast depth of knowledge and experience.

Life in Washington truly is more interesting than fiction.