You know, I’ve commented on the tendency of many liberals, in the past, to not only deny that the Mainstream Media leans so far to the left that it’s amazing they don’t fall down, but to even venture that the MSM is biased toward the right. I’ve recently reached the point of simply shaking my head — it has been said that trying to argue with a liberal is like standing in a bucket and trying to pick yourself up by the handle, and in most cases I couldn’t agree more.

Those who try to tell me that the MSM leans to the right are either not paying very close attention, if any at all, to news “reports,” are lying through their teeth fabricating as to their perceptions of what they read in the papers and see on television news shows or, as the only other alternative I can figure, they are hopeless cretins.

It is truly shameful that newspapers like the New York Times are not honest with their readership, filtering the news they print to meet their leftward bias and anti-Bush agenda, thereby giving that readership only the fraction of current events they deem safe(for their political goals) to let the people know. This is highly reminiscent of another publication, called Pravda, during the years of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The NYT has become, over the years, little more than a giant propaganda mill for the left.

As alternative media sources and conservative blogs have begun to fight back against the disinformation put out by the New York Times and other MSM “news” venues and more and more people have begun to acknowledge the profound bias of the MSM, subscriptions have reportedly begun falling off rather noticeably. In their on-line venue, the NYT has recently begun charging a subscription rate for access to their Op-Ed columns, possibly to offset the decline in hard copy revenues.

They crowed loudly at the height of the Valerie Plame affair, hoping to see an indictment for “outing” her come directly out of the White House, claiming that national security was compromised by some traitor or other within, yet they themselves did exponentially worse when they recently “exposed” a Bush/NSA program that has prevented post 9/11 U.S. terrorist attacks they labelled as domestic spying, and inferring that George Bush illegally exceeded his authority as President.

National Security authority and columnist Max Boot has the treasonous and reckless hypocrisy displayed by the New York Times defined perfectly here.

…I eagerly await the righteous indignation from the Plame Platoon about the spilling of secrets in wartime and its impassioned calls for an independent counsel to prosecute the leakers. And wait … And wait …

I suspect it’ll be a long wait because the rule of thumb seems to be that although it’s treasonous for pro-Bush partisans to spill secrets that might embarrass an administration critic, it’s a public service for anti-Bush partisans to spill secrets that might embarrass the administration. The determination of which secrets are OK to reveal is, of course, to be made not by officials charged with protecting our nation but by journalists charged with selling newspapers.

Good column, read it all.