In my various and sundry meanderings through the news this morning I ran across a column by Rich Lowry that bears reading by anyone who even dreams that most of the remnants of our once (long, long ago) great and reasonably fair/ impartial news media are even worth the time to peruse them, let alone pay for any of their publications.

Remember how the MSM and that “Hope and Change” presidential candidate, Barack Obama, criticized (nastily and mercilessly) Prersident George W. Bush for every last thing he decided regarding the handling of terrorists that didn’t fit into our own judicial system’s policies of prosecuting criminals (like purse snatchers, dope dealers, litterbugs, drunk drivers and those who tore the “do not remove” tags off their new bed mattresses)? How waterboarding, raising a voice to or otherwise not providing every murderous terrorist with every courtesy of a visiting VIP was a dastardly event?

Well, here we now have good ol’ “Barry” Obama, the good, all American hypocrite-next-door, firming up his own assassination policies.

“This,” he and his assassination czar will now decide, “is whom we’ll have killed…”

Killing has never been so discriminating, so urbane, so cool.

The New York Times and Newsweek both ran long, largely admiring articles on how President Obama selects individual terrorists to terminate with extreme prejudice. The administration’s “smart power” isn’t working out so well, but smart killing is a smash success.

Obama’s national-security team — as well as his top political adviser, David Axelrod — gather on “Terror Tuesdays” to go over an expanding “kill list” that the president examines with the aid of capsule biographies of the terrorists, or “baseball cards.” Then the president decides who lives and who — if we get him in our sights — dies.

Needless to say, had Dick Cheney consulted “baseball cards” to decide in weekly meetings attended by Karl Rove who deserved to have close encounters with drone-fired missiles, Nancy Pelosi would have drafted the articles of impeachment herself.

The Obama killings vindicate the core premises of the Bush War on Terror: This is a war, and the protections of our criminal-justice system don’t apply to the enemy.

In light of the kill list, it’s a wonder anyone ever objected to Bush-era detentions or interrogations. If we can pick someone off a roster of names and sentence him to death without due process, surely we can capture and hold that same person.

If we can execute someone — and any of his associates who happen to be in the vicinity — from on high, surely we can keep him awake at night and otherwise discomfit him should he fall into our hands.

The Times notes that “Obama’s record has not drawn anything like the sweeping criticism from allies that his predecessor faced.” True enough. It hasn’t been subjected to a highly politicized assault at home and abroad by people desperate to put it in the worst possible light and even make it a war crime.

As they say, SNIP!

For most of the left, the highest principle of just war theory is licet si Obama id faciat — it’s OK if Obama does it. This is how Gitmo, formerly a standing repudiation of all that we hold dear as a nation, becomes an afterthought when it is owned and operated by one Barack H. Obama.

As it happens, the president holds exactly the same Obama-centric view. So long as the kill list is overseen by him as judge and executioner, it’s beyond reproach.

The press tends to agree. Newsweek reports, “The choices he faces are brutally difficult, and he has struggled with them — sometimes turning them over in his mind again and again.”

Really? He thinks about who he is deciding to kill? The nation is blessed to have such a scrupulous leader.

The Times maintains that the president parses the kill list as “a student of writings on war by Augustine and Thomas Aquinas.” If no anecdotes have yet emerged about Obama justifying a particular kill with reference to the Summa Theologica, it’s probably only a matter of time.

In authorizing the strikes, Obama is to be commended for his coldbloodedness, although no tactic is perfect or without costs. The war in Yemen is sliding the wrong way’ relations with target-rich Pakistan are at a low ebb. But there should be no doubt now that the commander in chief possesses fearsome powers in the War on Terror. All it took for Democrats to accept that was for President Obama to begin exercising them.

I wonder when Barack Hussein will write an executive order commanding that all people refer to him as Obama Rex…

Ah, the land of my birth, which has not been my country since I became an American nearly 40 years ago and the liberal media seem to have the sort of relationship only a Chamberlain could love.

If you listen to “progressives”, Cuba is a true paradise under the Castro regime, with great health care, fair governance, great health care, a benign leader, great health care, liberty beyond belief and, of course, great health care.

They embrace Che as the noble revolutionary while ignoring his status as engineer of the Cuban death camps and view Fidel and Raoul with the reverence they once reserved for Ho Chi Minh.

They overlook the regime’s suffocation of human rights as a mere “detail” that holds little significance in the face of all that Fidelian benevolence they perceive on that island made miserable by what amounts to an oppressive tinpot dictator.

Can you imagine what the New York Times would say if we quarantined all of America’s HIV victims, as they began doing in the late 1980s in Cuba?

From the L.A. Times, 1988

A member of the first U.S. delegation to visit Cuba’s quarantine center for people infected with the AIDS-causing human immunodeficiency virus Thursday described the detention facility as “pleasant” but “frightening in its implications.”

The first detailed picture of what the Cuban government calls its “sanitarium” for all identified HIV carriers was painted by Ronald Bayer, associate professor at Columbia University’s School of Public Health, in an interview with The Times.

Cuba is the only nation in the world that has mandated universal HIV testing and enforced isolation of all virus carriers. Bayer said he was told by Cuban health officials that one-third of the nation’s 10.2 million people have been tested so far and that 240 Cubans–171 men and 69 women–have been placed in the camp, where they are required to spend the rest of their lives. They are removed from their jobs but continue to be paid.

“We were shown groups of nondescript apartments that looked like typical Cuban suburban housing,” Bayer said. “It was neither barracks-like nor dungeon-like, although I have to assume we were shown the best. It was impossible to tell whether the complex was surrounded by a wall or a fence.

“But even if it all looked as good as what we saw, it does not resolve the moral justification of incarceration based on supposed future behavior,” said Bayer, a medical ethicist who has long specialized in AIDS, or acquired immune deficiency syndrome.

My emphasis above.

Well, that sentiment came from an L.A. Times journalist 24 years ago. That paper is a member, in good standing, of the liberal media.

How times have changed since then.

From Times Watch:

So Much for Civil Liberties: Communist Cuba’s Mandatory AIDS Quarantine Defended in New York Times, Dictator Castro Praised

New York Times “global health correspondent” Donald McNeil Jr. made a rare trip to Cuba and filed a report praising the Communist island’s handling of the AIDS epidemic for Tuesday’s “A Regime’s Tight Grip on AIDS – In Cuba, rigorous testing, education, and free condoms help keep the epidemic in check.” Conspiciously absent from that headline, especially for a newspaper that prides itself on defending civil liberties, were the involuntary quarantines of AIDS patients that took place in Cuba until 1993.

McNeil also downplayed concerns about the sanitarium prisons for AIDS patients (”life inside was not brutal”), a policy the Times would no doubt find dangerous and repellent if done in America. He also praised Cuba’s “universal health care” and free condoms and credited “socialism” for Cuba’s success.

(The same edition of the Science Times was much harder on American health policy, featuring medical writer Tara Parker-Pope talking to a doctor angry about the medical tests selfish Americans demand, a theme well-suited to the Times’ call for cost-cutting via universal health care: “Plenty of Blame in a Health System ‘Designed to Fail.’”)

McNeil opened with the case of Yudelsy García O’Connor, the first Cuban baby known to have been born with H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS, and downplayed the quaranatine policy.

Ms. García is alive thanks partly to lucky genes, and partly to the intensity with which Cuba has attacked its AIDS epidemic. Whatever debate may linger about the government’s harsh early tactics — until 1993, everyone who tested positive for H.I.V. was forced into quarantine — there is no question that they succeeded.

Cuba now has one of the world’s smallest epidemics, a mere 14,038 cases. Its infection rate is 0.1 percent, on par with Finland, Singapore and Kazakhstan. That is one-sixth the rate of the United States, one-twentieth of nearby Haiti.

The population of Cuba is only slightly larger than that of New York City. In the three decades of the global AIDS epidemic, 78,763 New Yorkers have died of AIDS. Only 2,364 Cubans have.

Other elements have contributed to Cuba’s success: It has free universal basic health care; it has stunningly high rates of H.I.V. testing; it saturates its population with free condoms, concentrating on high-risk groups like prostitutes; it gives its teenagers graphic safe-sex education; it rigorously traces the sexual contacts of each person who tests positive.

{rigorously traces the sexual contacts of each person who tests positive — I’ll just bet Cuba’s “healthcare” system does}

You’ll notice how the Times writer justifies (because it worked) the quarantine system.

Now, again imagine if the U.S. Government did the quarantine number on Americans with HIV. What are the odds the same journalist and, in fact, the entire body of N.Y. Times writers wouldn’t begin immediately pummeling Washington with a massive editorial crusade condemning such offensive violations of human rights.

Apparently what would constitute “dastardliness” here in the U.S. of A. is perfectly acceptible in a nation governed, as our media seems to believe, in a more enlightened way.

What stupidos these liberals are… Ooops, sorry; It’s just all those things they know that aren’t so.

You may recall this post on the Komen Fund deciding to discontinue their largesse to Infanticide Central Planned Parenthood, after which they rescinded that decision.

Well, from the Washington Times:

Susan G. Komen’s short-lived decision to drop grants to Planned Parenthood was met with fury from the left wing, and its outrage was immediately reported by the liberal news media. But it wasn’t the first time Komen had been attacked from the left. As a private charity, Komen was within its rights to not renew grants for breast health care for Planned Parenthood, a group that doesn’t even perform mammograms, but that wasn’t how the media covered it. CNN blamed the decision on conservatives, while MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell claimed that “the politics of stopping Planned Parenthood has now put more women at risk of dying from breast cancer.”

It didn’t take long for that uproar on the left to prompt a reversal of Komen’s decision, and for Komen Vice President Karen Handel to resign from the breast cancer charity. The controversy also renewed criticism of Komen over a completely different issue: whether or not the common chemical BPA (formally known as bisphenol A), is a risk factor for breast cancer.

Above emphasis mine.

Can you believe this?

Of course you can! After all, we’re talking liberals, here, particularly the liberal…um, “progressive” media, for whom truth plays second fiddle to political agendas.

Read the whole thing here.

So you might say the Komen Fund was mugged by Planned Parenthood, the left wing media and their weaselist infanticidal proponents.

From Heritage. org:

You wouldn’t know it if you solely paid attention to the mainstream media, but while President Barack Obama attempts to sell the country on hundreds of billions in new stimulus spending and $1.5 trillion in new taxes, his Administration is smack in the middle of several growing scandals: the Operation Fast and Furious gun-running debacle and the crony capitalism wrongdoing involving Solyndra and LightSquared.

In the fall of 2009, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), which is overseen by President Obama’s Department of Justice, launched an effort to sell weapons to small-time gun buyers in the hopes of tracing them to major weapons traffickers along the southwestern border and into Mexico. Their effort, which is known as Operation Fast and Furious, failed terribly.

Around 1,500 of the guns went unaccounted for, about two-thirds of those guns ended up in Mexico, a border patrol agent was shot and killed with weapons that were sold as part of the operation, 57 Fast and Furious weapons have been connected to at least 11 violent crimes in the U.S., and in Mexico an unconfirmed toll of at least 200 people have been killed or wounded with other weapons linked to the botched effort.

Save for recent reports from CBS News and the Los Angeles Times, and earlier reporting by ABC News, the mainstream media has largely ignored the story and the White House press corps has not bothered to ask the President or press secretary Jay Carney about the scandal since July 5 — that’s 78 days, and over 40 press briefings, without one single related question.

Meanwhile, congressional hearings were held, top officials associated with the operation were removed from their positions, and a third individual resigned. In the latest news, Mexican officials are complaining that, to this day, the United States has not offered an explanation about Fast and Furious, much less an apology. And yesterday, CBS News reported that a series of secretly recorded audio tapes thought to have been recorded in March reveal that an Arizona gun dealer and an ATF agent involved in the operation were worried about the unraveling scandal.

Okay, there’s one we’ve mentioned in a past post.

As if it weren’t enough, however,

Turning from guns to butter, another scandal has cropped up, this one involving the solar panel manufacturing company Solyndra, which received a $535 million loan guarantee from the Energy Department as part of President Obama’s green jobs spending spree. The President lauded the company when he spoke at the unveiling of its new factory in May of last year. But now, little more than a year later, it stands bankrupt and plans to lay off more than 1,000 employees. Days after it filed for bankruptcy, the FBI raided the company’s offices and the homes of its executives.

The Obama Administration had a lot riding on Solyndra and the promise it offered. The President had made “green” energy a centerpiece of his failed plan to boost job growth in the United States, likening his effort to America’s “moonshot”–the space race following the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik. The import of the company’s bankruptcy was evident in a January 31 e-mail between Office of Management and Budget staff regarding “Solyndra optics.” In the e-mail, the staff discussed what it would look like if the company went belly-up down the road, its implications for the 2012 elections, and how an earlier default might give the Obama Administration some credit for “fiscal discipline.”

Meanwhile,

Then there’s the story of LightSquared, a wireless start-up company backed by billionaire Democratic donor Philip Falcone. The Daily Beast reports that military officials fear that the company’s technology could interfere with GPS signals–and that “two U.S. officials allege the White House tried to influence their [congressional] testimony to rush key testing, to LightSquare’s benefit.”

Enter the investigations. Representative Darrell Issa (R-CA), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said Tuesday that his committee plans to investigate government loans to private companies made by the Obama Administration, according to The Hill. “I want to see when the president and his cronies are picking winners and losers,” Issa said. Now, Reuters reports that Solyndra’s chief executive and chief financial officer will invoke their Fifth Amendment rights and refuse to answer questions at the hearing on Friday.

Is this what happens when “we” (quotes denote “not me, but the voting kollective“) elect as president a man of unknown character from a political environment renowned for its shameless, blatant corruption because of his race and because he lays out a smooth line of B.S.

A cross-border gun-running scandal, deaths in the United States and Mexico, staff removals and resignations, secret audio recordings, complaints from foreign officials, hundreds of millions of dollars in loans, bankruptcy, an FBI raid, campaign donors, and allegations of inappropriate White House influence in congressional testimony. There are serious questions coming out of Washington. It’s time the media start demanding answers.

If a conservative had been in the White House, you can bet your bottom dollar the mainstream media would have been “demanding answers” for quite some time now.

Here’s the entire column.

This is, as we know, a security oriented blog, and as such, there is no way we cannot link this interesting New York Post Op Ed by Stewart Baker, a former mucky muck at the Department of Homeland Security.

What’s the best way to commemorate the 10th anniversary of 9/11? By returning to the mindset of Sept. 10, apparently. At least that’s the message delivered by the Associated Press and a chorus of blogs hyperventilating about the NYPD’s antiterror tactics.

I spent what felt like the better part of a day reading the long AP article and the commentary, thinking that surely there must be a scandal in there somewhere.

Nope.

When you’re done, you find that the New York Policy Department is uniquely determined to find terrorists before they strike. To do that, the NYPD is willing to go far outside its borders — to London, to Jerusalem, even to New Jersey.

It partners with counterterror analysts at the CIA. It looks for leads in places where terrorists have been found before — in immigrant communities and in mosques, for example — and it doesn’t give terrorists a haven where they know the cops can’t go. It takes advantage of its diversity by asking its officers to hang out in communities where they blend in. It recruits street sources wherever it can find them. It maps the neighborhoods it’s most concerned about.

Shocked yet?

Me neither.

So what gives? How come we’re getting this story, at this length, at this time?

What gives? How come? Read on.

Mr. Baker’s explanation most definitely sounds about right, given the territorialism over teamwork mentality of government agencies and the general state of the liberal media, which seems increasingly to be a general state of anti-United States.

And at the Washington Post, no less.

From the Washington Times:

Jose Antonio Vargas, a former Washington Post reporter, has come out of the closet and announced to the world that he is an illegal alien. In his tell-all confession, published in the New York Times Magazine, he outs not only himself, but others who abetted his illegal presence and employment in the United States, including The Post itself, which continued to employ him even after a member of the paper’s management learned that he had lied about his citizenship.

Most important, Mr. Vargas‘ confession exposes the ease with which he, and millions of illegal aliens like him, can circumvent the law. It was as easy as a piece of white masking tape and a photocopy machine. Mr. Vargas writes that when he was a teenager, he and his grandfather covered over the portion of his Social Security card that said he was ineligible to work in the United States before photocopying it. Using a copy of an already flimsy card that constitutes the most important piece of identification Americans possess, Mr. Vargas was able repeatedly to flout the law against illegal aliens working in this country.

Why, you must wonder, does it seem like this kind of thing would only be likely to go down at liberal (or multiple liberal, in this case, as indicated in the article’s next paragraph) newspapers?

If any of his employers - The Washington Post, Seattle Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Huffington Post - had simply verified his Social Security number, they would have learned that it was invalid for employment. If the Social Security Administration (SSA) had been required to disclose that it was collecting taxes on an account that was not authorized for employment, the government itself could have identified Mr. Vargas as an illegal alien and taken action. But employers are not required to verify Social Security numbers, and government agencies are not required to inform other government agencies that laws are being violated. And so we have an estimated 7 million illegal aliens on payrolls in the United States.

Whether it was his intent or not, the timing of Mr. Vargas‘ confession provides compelling testimony in support of legislation introduced earlier this month by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (Texas Republican) and the ranking minority member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Chuck Grassley (Iowa Republican). Both of these bills would mandate that instead of a cursory inspection of any of more than two dozen different documents, all employers would be required to use the E-Verify system, which verifies information against Social Security and immigration records.

The Smith and Grassley bills also would discourage an additional and common form of fraud perpetrated by Mr. Vargas. In his public confession, Mr. Vargas admits to having perjured himself repeatedly by attesting that he was a U.S. citizen on the I-9 forms he filled out for employers. Mandatory verification of his Social Security number would have revealed that he was neither a citizen nor an alien authorized to work in this country and could have subjected him to criminal charges.

On the other hand, there being a certain amount of competition between newspapers, perhaps the Washington Post et al were merely trying to outdo the New York Times’ Jason Blair episode.

I’ve always thought that a strange title for an organization that’s more a Murder Incorporated for defenseless unborn, but very much alive, babies.

Naturally, since baby murder goes well, somehow, with the doctrine that’s become popular among our intellectual elite and the “progressive” politicians they elect, it is also supported by the mainstream media who, as we know, have a habit of reporting only what is convenient for the public to know in order to press their political agendas. As often as not, there are a few twists, spins and, to those who actively seek the truth, some profoundly loud omissions.

Fortunately, there are a few honest journalists out there, including those who write for the Culture and Media Institute.

Speaking of which…

Media Ignore Planned Parenthood’s $1.3 Billion Federal Funding Discrepancy

Networks and newspapers silent on government report contradicting abortion group’s taxpayer funding figures.

If $1.3 billion is unaccounted for and the media don’t report it, did it really happen?

According to an American Life League review of Planned Parenthood’s annual reports, the organization received more than $2 billion in federal grants and contracts between 2002 and 2008. A June 16 Government Accountability Report, however, found that the organization spent just $657.1 million of taxpayer money in the same time period.

The $1.3 billion discrepancy failed to catch the attention of the nation’s major media outlets. None of the networks (ABC, CBS and NBC) or major newspapers (Los Angeles times, The New York Times, USA Today and The Washington Post) reported it.

A Culture and Media Institute review of coverage found that only one newspaper listed among Nexis’ “major newspapers” – The Houston Chronicle – even mentioned the GAO report. The Chronicle’s June 16 article noted that Planned Parenthood spent $657 million of federal money over seven years, but did not mention the income/outlay discrepancy.

Amazing, here are all these media institutions in whom the public place their (I would say “our”, except I don’t trust those leftist turds, not me) trust for news, and only one of them even seems to “know” about a “discrepancy” on the part of an organization that our government siphons hundreds of millions of our hard earned tax dollars to.

Don’t Follow the Money

The media have made Planned Parenthood a go-to source for several stories over the last six months, including debate over abortion language in health care reform legislation, the trial of the activist who killed abortionist Dr. George Tiller, and the 50th anniversary of the Pill.

From Dec. 28, 2009, to June 28, 2010, the broadcast networks and the “Big 4” newspapers mentioned Planned Parenthood 56 times in news stories. None of those stories mentioned the GAO report, and only one article reported the amount of federal money going to Planned Parenthood.

The February 27 article in The New York Times mentioned an investigative operation by pro-life activist Lila Rose which found Planned Parenthood clinics willing to accept donations from people who wanted African American babies aborted. A separate New York Times report on January 28 characterized the investigation as “prank calls” to Planned Parenthood.

Four reports referred to state funding of Planned Parenthood, but did not mention federal resources granted to the organization.

Planned Parenthood’s 2008 Annual Report says $349.6 million in taxpayer-funded grants and contracts accounted for more than a third (36 percent) of the organization’s income that year, second only to health center revenue. Federal funding for Planned Parenthood has increased by 45 percent since 2001-2002, when it received a reported $240.9 million from taxpayers.

While federal orders mandate that government money not be used directly for abortions, pro-life advocates point out that federal money used to cover non-abortion costs frees up private money to pay for abortions.

“Frees it up.”

Favorite Experts

Planned Parenthood is by far the most cited pro-abortion group when it comes to national media coverage. In the last six months, 30 broadcast and print reports have quoted Planned Parenthood representatives and another 26 have mentioned the organization.

The 56 mentions of Planned Parenthood dwarf other pro-abortion groups, including the National Organization for Women (30) and NARAL Pro-Choice America (15).

When abortion was a major focus of health care reform debates, the media turned to Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards and other affiliated representatives to statements and analysis. When the media celebrated the 50th anniversary of “the Pill,” the media commemorated Planned Parenthood’s role in making it possible.

A February 26 profile in The Washington Post painted a glowing picture of abortion doctor Carol Ball. The article described a “difficult time” for Ball and other doctors who perform late term abortions in South Dakota.

When Planned Parenthood produced an ad in response to Focus on the Family’s pro-life Super Bowl ad, the media praised it. USA Today noted it “defend[ed] abortion rights,” although the Focus on the Family ad did not target abortion “rights.”

The New York Times on January 27 turned to Richards on the increase in teen pregnancy rates, and she used the opportunity bash abstinence education. “This new study makes it crystal clear that abstinence-only sex education for teenagers does not work,” Richards said.

In addition to news reports related to Planned Parenthood, newspapers published five letters to the editor from readers mentioning the organization and fives letters to the editor from Planned Parenthood executives.

Another seven op-eds and entertainment reviews mentioned Planned Parenthood, as well as 15 death notices, and a couple of comedians’ jokes. All told, the networks and newspapers mentioned Planned Parenthood more than 80 times in the last six months.

But when someone noticed a $1.3 billion discrepancy in Planned Parenthood’s handling of federal money – crickets.

See what I mean about the mainstream media?

The Sound of Silence

One letter to the editor in the Los Angeles Times February 7 illustrated the effect the media blackout has had on public perceptions of Planned Parenthood.

Responding to the media-manufactured controversy over Focus on the Family’s pro-life Super Bowl ad, a reader wrote, “If I had it, I would give millions to Planned Parenthood to advertise on CBS during the Super Bowl.”

Well, dear reader, your wish has already come true. You might not know it from reading the Times, but Planned Parenthood already receives more than $350 million every year from you and every other American taxpayer, with no oversight from the “watchdogs” in the media.

$350 million every year!!!!

Of yours and my tax dollars, monies we could find much better uses for than having a bunch of “progressive” politicians give it to Planned Parenthood.

More than enough in any reasonable man’s book to justify giving every politician involved his or her just desserts.

I read this item in today’s Wall Street Journal’s Best of the Web Today, published daily as part of the Opinion Journal by James Taranto, and having been to many demonstrations in my time during which I had the opportunity to observe “peaceful” liberals in action, couldn’t resist putting in my two cents.

“In a blunt caution to political friend and foe, President Barack Obama said Saturday that partisan rants and name-calling under the guise of legitimate discourse pose a serious danger to America’s democracy, and may incite ‘extreme elements’ to violence,” the Associated Press reports from Ann Arbor, Mich.

Two thousand miles away, another AP dispatch reports, there occurred an example of exactly what the president was warning about:

Close to 20 businesses were damaged after what started as a peaceful immigrants’ rights march in downtown Santa Cruz [Calif.] turned violent, requiring police to call other agencies for help, authorities said.

Police spokesman Zach Friend said an estimated 250 people started marching through the city around 10:30 p.m. Saturday.

It was a harmonious but “unpermitted and unsanctioned event,” he said, until some in the crowd started breaking windows and spraying paint on retail shops that line the downtown corridor.

Friend said he wasn’t sure if the damage was caused by people marching in support of immigrants’ rights, or if the group was “infiltrated by anarchists.”

Anarchy signs were spray-painted on some of the buildings.

“They’re a group of people who seem to fancy themselves as revolutionaries, but what they really are are a group of morons,” Friend said.

You’ve got to love the way the AP describes this: It started as a peaceful march but “turned violent.” It was totally harmonious “until some in the crowd started breaking windows.” And the window breakers might have just been infiltrators!

At “peaceful” liberal demonstrations during which I was part of the conservative counter-demonstration assemblages (usually, what we have is the lefties on one side of the street, the conservatives on the other), I have uniformly, not just occasionally observed one constant, other than that while conservatives arrive on our own as individuals or in small groups, a large number of the liberals and entourage are bussed in from all points in order to bolster the size of their crowd for media exposure purposes, and that is that when everybody has gone:

1. The conservative side of the street is immaculate, no trash or property damage to be seen, whereas,

2. The liberal side of the street is utterly trashed, garbage all over the sidewalk, newspaper vending machines and other non-bolted-down artifacts overturned and/or tossed into the actual street, also a none-too-rare garnish of graffiti and/or broken windows.

Moving right along to complete WSJ Editorial Editor Taranto’s actual topic, which compares the biased treatment liberals receive in such situations over conservatives…

Compare this with the lead paragraph of the AP’s March 20 dispatch on the anti-ObamaCare tea-party protests:

House Democrats heard it all Saturday–words of inspiration from President Barack Obama and raucous chants of protests from demonstrators. And at times it was flat-out ugly, including some racial epithets aimed at black members of Congress.

The claims of racial epithets have since been disputed and were never substantiated, but let’s give the AP the benefit of the doubt and assume that at the time, the reporter knew of no reason to doubt the word of the congressmen making the claims.

Even so, had the tea-party protesters gotten the Santa Cruz treatment, the AP would have noted that the rally was completely nonviolent, even if it featured some ugly words; that there was no ugliness at all until the protest “turned ugly”; and that the people who (allegedly) shouted the ugly words might well have been infiltrators.

If the Santa Cruz protesters had gotten the tea-party treatment, by contrast, the AP would have described the event simply as a riot and would not have distinguished between the peaceful protesters and the violent few who might be infiltrators anyway.

What’s more, conservative politicians and commentators would be sounding a constant refrain–echoed by the mainstream media–that politicians are inciting the violence with “antigovernment” statements like this one, reported April 23 by CBS News:

President Obama suggested today that the immigration bill expected to be signed into law in Arizona is a “misguided” piece of legislation that “threatened to undermine basic notions of fairness that we cherish as Americans, as well as the trust between police and their communities that is so crucial to keeping us safe.”

We don’t think that journalists should give the Santa Cruz protesters the tea-party treatment or the tea partiers the Santa Cruz treatment. Both sides ought to get the same treatment–fair treatment–from those whose job is to cover the news impartially.

As for Obama, his efforts to demonize the opposition are unseemly and unpresidential.

Given the breadth of his policies’ unpopularity, they amount to an attack on the majority of Americans. That seems likely they will prove politically unwise as well.

That, as they (whoever they are) say, is for sure!

One trend I’ve noticed for quite some time is that of the mainstream media’s OpEds tending to echo whatever the agendas of our farthest-left politicians happen to be. The farther these anti-America intentions list to port, the more likely the MSM is to “go for the gusto”.

That said, the Grey Lady is at it again.

The next big thing in heart surgery are replacement valves, which can be implanted without open-heart surgery. But instead of evaluating this as a straightforward boon to humanity, the Times maintained its year-long push for health care rationing, emphasizing the new technology as a “costly valve for the frail” that may drive up health care spending even further with costly new procedures.”

Okay, they’ve said it, a “costly valve for the frail” that may drive up health care spending even further with costly new procedures.”

They’re not concerned with the damage done to our economy by massive illegal immigration, cap-&-trade legislation, government controlled healthcare or any number of social services that gouge the taxpayer, but here they are complaining about the cost of a specific procedure for “the frail”, which can only, or mostly, mean senior citizens.

A race is on to develop the potentially next big thing in heart surgery: a replacement valve that can be implanted through thin tubes known as catheters rather than by traditional open-heart surgery.

The contest pits two major companies, Edwards Lifesciences and Medtronic. Analysts estimate a market for the product that could exceed $1.5 billion within six years. But if the valves catch on, their benefits for the nation’s aging population could be substantial — even if the impact on the nation’s health care bill may be hard to calculate.

Our “compassionate” liberals evidently feel that since the old folks are beneficiaries of the system (never mind all the Social Security taxes and so forth they’ve had extracted from their paychecks over the years, like it or not) and no longer paying into it, they are some sort of parasite better expunged.

God protect Grandma and Grandpa from the New York Times and their ilk…

Yeah, by him I mean former New York Mayor Ed Koch, a Dem left over from the years before the far left bought and paid for the Democratic Party. Granted, he’s somewhere on the liberal side of things, but he doesn’t lick the hind quarters of the anti-America crowd like most of the other Democrats do these days.

In a September 22nd editorial, The New York Times renewed its opposition to the construction of a fence to deter illegal crossings from Mexico to the United States.

The Times speculates that the current decline in border arrests “could be because of the bad economy as much as the fence.” They are probably right. What I object to is the Times’ insistence that a better solution to the problem of illegal immigration is “for Congress to reform the nation’s immigration laws. No fence can keep a determined immigrant out or absolve Congress of that responsibility.” The Times’ version of reforming our immigration laws means providing amnesty and a path to citizenship to the estimated 12 to 20 million illegal aliens now living in the U.S.

The Times refuses to use the words illegal aliens when referring to people crossing our borders without permission. Instead, it calls them “immigrants,” or “migrants.” If people entered The New York Times building without permission and squatted there, would the Times call them migrants? Or would it call them trespassers and have them evicted?

If people entered The New York Times building without permission and squatted there, would the Times call them migrants? Or would it call them trespassers and have them evicted?

Have ‘em evicted, of course. Do as we say, not as we do, right?

The pro-amnesty liberals are, after all, the same people who live in gated communities that won’t be having any of these amnestied aliens living in them, anyway, so they can wish whatever they want on the rest of us.

I oppose the granting of amnesty except in cases demanding a compassionate response, e.g., children who are American citizens whose parents are illegals. My solution to illegal immigration is prison for American employers who knowingly hire illegals. I do not support jailing the aliens, but I would support paying their transportation costs back to their homelands. If their own countries want to give them a preference in applying for U.S. citizenship and allow them to jump ahead of those who have patiently waited in line, I would try in some way to accommodate that action. I doubt that will occur.

If such amnesty is offered again, as it was in 1986, it will make a mockery of our laws. The illegals will continue to come, hoping and expecting a subsequent amnesty. The Pew Research Center, according to the September 23rd Times, reported “one-third of Mexicans say they would move to this country if they could, and more than half of those would move even if they did not have legal immigration documents.” Those Mexican citizens seem to agree with the Times on open borders.

Personally, I agree with Koch that the Reagan amnesty of 1986 was a mistake (which only goes to show that even the greatest among us make a mistake now and then), but I disagree with the former mayor about anchor babies. If the parents are here illegally to begin with, the child shouldn’t have automatic U.S. citizenship. It’s a piss poor system that allows such flaws as the opportunity for people to use the creation of human life for the purpose of exploiting the legal system, not much different from a welfare mother who keeps on cranking out babies for the sole purpose of milking more money out of the taxpayer to support her drug or alcohol addictions.

The Times’ editorial is correct, however, to criticize the cost of the fence. It also tells us that “Investigators from the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office report that the larger, actual fence-covering a 600 mile-plus stretch between San Diego and Brownsville, Tex.-cost $2.4 billion to build and will cost an extra $6.5 billion in upkeep across two decades.” It also notes that “Auditors reported last week that the high-tech, 28-mile “virtual” section of the fence was running a mere seven years behind this month’s planned opening.”

Ridiculous. Somebody, probably a lot of people, should be fired for incompetence. That is why when government officials tell us they intend to fund a new program like health care and save money by eliminating waste, fraud, and incompetence, nobody believes them. This single example explains why, but there are many others. The purpose of this article is to sound the alarm so that we can gird our loins and prepare for the next congressional battle over immigration which is likely to take place in the election year 2010.

The above emphasis is my way of shouting “Right On!!!!” from the rooftops.

Read the entire column.