Media Tougher On...

CBS News posted a wide ranging interview with Mark Penn over the weekend. While they did indeed cover a lot of ground in this interview, I wanted to focus on one particular part of the interview here.

CBSNews.com: Your former colleague Howard Wolfson argued that you all unintentionally paved the way for Palin by exposing some of the unfair media coverage that Hillary Clinton received. And, therefore, a lot of the media may now be treating Sarah Palin with kid gloves. Do you agree with that?

Mark Penn: Well, no, I think the people themselves saw unfair media coverage of Senator Clinton. I think if you go back, the polls reflected very clearly what "Saturday Night Live" crystallized in one of their mock debates about what was happening with the press.

I think here the media is on very dangerous ground. I think that when you see them going through every single expense report that Governor Palin ever filed, if they don't do that for all four of the candidates, they're on very dangerous ground. I think the media so far has been the biggest loser in this race. And they continue to have growing credibility problems.

And I think that that's a real problem growing out of this election. The media now, all of the media — not just Fox News, that was perceived as highly partisan — but all of the media is now being viewed as partisan in one way or another. And that is an unfortunate development.

CBSNews.com: So you think the media is being uniquely tough on Palin now?

Mark Penn: Well, I think that the media is doing the kinds of stories on Palin that they're not doing on the other candidates. And that's going to subject them to people concluding that they're giving her a tougher time. Now, the media defense would be, "Yeah, we looked at these other candidates who have been in public life at an earlier time."

What happened here very clearly is that the controversy over Palin led to 37 million Americans tuning into a vice-presidential speech, something that is unprecedented, because they wanted to see for themselves. This is an election in which the voters are going to decide for themselves. The media has lost credibility with them.

Emphasis mine. The media swarm on Alaska (which I hear rivaled the late August mosquito swarms and were just as welcome) only managed to dig up the fact that when Sarah Palin took office she (gasp) fired the appointees of her predecessor who just happened to be a tiny bit corrupt and hire people she knew and trusted! Of course that didn't prevent some of them from breathlessly implying that there was something to be concerned about.

While I would caution that you take a lot of what Penn says at face value (he is a long time adviser to both former President Clinton and Senator Clinton) it is still one of those interviews that you should read in its entirety because it offers a lot of insight into this leg of the campaign.

Walking Wounded

One of the things that I am doing in all my spare time, is reading the book "Regret The Error: How Media Mistakes Pollute the Press And Imperil Free Speech" by Craig Silverman. It is an entertaining look into media errors, the history of biased media reporting. For anyone who is interested in media coverage of anything (and especially for bloggers) it is must reading.

The charge of media bias is no longer one leveled by bloggers on the right (although we were the first to sound the warnings). Many on the left have also started to notice a bias in media reporting.

Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell was supposed to give “closing remarks” during this afternoon’s Shorenstein Center-sponsored panel discussion with all three Sunday show moderators — NBC’s Tom Brokaw, ABC’s George Stephanopoulous and CBS’s Bob Schieffer — but instead, he opened up a can of worms about bias in 2008 election coverage

"Ladies and gentleman, the coverage of Barack Obama was embarrassing," said Rendell, in the ballroom at Denver's Brown Palace Hotel. "It was embarrassing."

Rendell, an ardent Hillary Rodham Clinton supporter during the primaries, now backs Obama in the general election. Brokaw and Rendell began debating campaign coverage, including the on-air comments by Lee Cowan, and when MSNBC came up, Rendell went after the cable network.

“MSNBC was the official network of the Obama campaign," Rendell said, who called their coverage "absolutely embarrassing."

Chris Matthews, Rendell said, "loses his impartiality when he talks about the Clintons.”

Of course, the progressive bloggers will tell you that the media is biased toward Republicans which is not the case at all. Oh sure they point to Fox News but they have MSNBC, CNN (or as conservatives called them in the 1990's the CLINTON News Network for it's fawning coverage of President Bill Clinton), HNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, the NY Times, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the LA Times and many many more. That is what gave rise to the success of talk radio superstars like Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham and Hugh Hewitt. It is no secret why these alternative media outlets have seen such success...the mainstream media has forgotten the main purpose of reporting - to bring people the facts about what is going on and letting the PEOPLE form their own opinions based on those facts.

There is a reason why circulation and viewership numbers are way down for these media outlets and why the number of alternative media sources (talk radio and the blogs) are going up. People know what they are getting with talk radio and blogs. Rush and Laura and O'Reilly and most bloggers readily admit that they are opinion based in their writings and utterances. They don't pull the wool over their listeners and readers eyes by claiming to be "journalists". That is the difference and why alternative media will continue to grow and conventional journalism shrinks.

Mainstream media needs to get it's act together quickly and get back to basics or they will be replaced by the main STREET media.

In The Tank

On Wednesday, the SLTrib breathlessly reported...

Obama out-raising McCain in Utah

As always, the truth is not exactly what was reported...

The rumors of John McCain's Utah demise are at least slightly exaggerated.

Media reports citing Barack Obama's sizeable fundraising advantage only show part of the picture. It is true the Democrats' presumptive nominee has outraised the GOP contender over the entire campaign -- $706,046 to $595,320. But trends are everything in politics, and a closer look at the numbers shows a story more murky than Utah Lake.

Conventional wisdom is that Mitt Romney simply drained Utah pocketbooks in his attempt to secure the nomination. (He took nearly 90 percent of the Utah vote in the primary.)

Romney and McCain were also bitter rivals in the primary races, putting McCain on many Utahns' bad side. So it's no wonder he had raised only about $160,000 here by February, when Romney suspended his campaign.

The first thing to look at in a McCain-Obama race then, is fundraising after Romney dropped out to see if the state's Republican base forgave the GOP pick. Beginning in March, Utahns gave about the same amount to each presumptive nominee through Aug. 20 -- $433,470 to McCain, $431,659 to Obama.

The Herald even did the basic reporting that the AP and the SLTrib neglected to do.

•¬ According to Federal Election Commission reports, McCain took it on the chin for two more months after Romney suspended his campaign, bringing in less than $20,000 each month. But in May, things turned around in a big way, with Utahns giving $257,862 to McCain when Romney and President George Bush came to town for a fundraiser.

• Obama had a huge March, bringing in $119,699. But he was in a battle royale with Democratic opponent Sen. Hillary Clinton until June, and his fundraising here has also been up and down. But if you count just the last three months, Obama has out-raised McCain by about $47,000.

Again I have to ask, is it any wonder at all why the average Joe and Jane Voter have little trust in what they hear from most major media outlets? I mean when they can not even be bothered to do the basic research that is required of their jobs...

Backlash!

Last month, I wondered if the press might actually be hurting the Obama Campaign. Well if the Pew Research group is to be believed, the answer appears to be yes.

Barack Obama may be the fresh face in this year's presidential election, but nearly half say they're already tired of hearing about him, a poll says.

With Election Day still three months away, 48 percent said they're hearing too much about the Democratic candidate, according to a poll released Wednesday by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center. Just 26 percent said the same about his Republican rival, John McCain.

Obama, the 47-year-old Illinois senator who would become the first black president, has dominated political news coverage much of the year. According to an ongoing Pew study, Obama has appeared in more news stories this year and more people say they have heard more about him than McCain, the longtime Arizona senator who also ran for president in 2000.

Two-thirds of Republicans and about half of independents said they've heard too much about Obama, as did a third of Democrats, a significant number.

At the same time, nearly four in 10 said they've been hearing too little about McCain — about four times the number who said so about Obama. About half of Republicans, four in 10 independents and even a quarter of Democrats said they've not heard enough about the GOP candidate.

The poll was conducted from Aug. 1-4 and involved telephone interviews with 1,004 adults. It had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

This says a whole lot about the media and how they may, in their own special way actually have contributed more to the demise of the Obama candidacy than any gaffe or Republican "dirty trick" could have ever done. Good work guys!

Obama's Bundlers

While I am waiting for the fun on the House floor to get rolling, I thought I would link up something for all of you Obama supporters out there. It appears that the Messiah is not as independent of big money as he has claimed to be.

In an effort to cast himself as independent of the influence of money on politics, Senator Barack Obama often highlights the campaign contributions of $200 or less that have amounted to fully half of the $340 million he has collected so far.

But records show that a third of his record-breaking haul has come from donations of $1,000 or more - a total of $112 million, more than the total of contributions in that category taken in by either Senator John McCain, his Republican rival, or Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, his opponent in the Democratic primaries.

Even better is where that money has come from...

Behind those large donations is a phalanx of more than 500 Obama "bundlers," fund-raisers who have each collected contributions totaling $50,000 or more. Many of the bundlers come from industries with critical interests in Washington. Nearly three dozen of the bundlers have raised more than $500,000, including more than a half-dozen who have passed the $1 million mark and one or two who have exceeded $2 million, according to interviews with fund-raisers.

Oh snap - that is going to upset the apostles at the New York Times.

I've said this before - Barack Obama is nothing more than a very savvy Chicago politician. Not that it necessarily a bad thing, but it is reality!

He tapped into well-connected people in Chicago before the 2004 Senate race, and, once elected, set out across the country starting in 2005 to cultivate some of his party's most influential money collectors.

He courted them with the savvy of a veteran politician, through phone calls, meals and one-on-one meetings; he wrote thank-you cards and remembered birthdays; he sent them autographed copies of his book and doted on their children.

The fruit of his efforts has put Obama's major donors on a pace that almost rivals the $147 million that President George W. Bush's Pioneer and Ranger network raised in $1,000-and-larger contributions in 2004 during the primary season.

Well we can certainly see why he broke his promise to take public financing now, can't we?

While this information is not new or stunning to someone who cut their political teeth in Chicago and it should not be new or stunning to any Democrat as this has been the stock in trade of the Chicago "Democratic" Party since long before I was born.

This is not necessarily a condemnation of Senator Obama - he is doing what politicians do. You can't really fault him for that. However, it is very telling that the only place you are seeing this reported is in the overseas newspapers. Could it be that the American media - those people who scream their ethics and objectivity from the rooftops - have a vested interest in Senator Obama's campaign?

Shocking!

I know we are all surprised to read this.

An editorial written by Republican presidential hopeful McCain has been rejected by the NEW YORK TIMES -- less than a week after the paper published an essay written by Obama, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

The paper's decision to refuse McCain's direct rebuttal to Obama's 'My Plan for Iraq' has ignited explosive charges of media bias in top Republican circles.

'It would be terrific to have an article from Senator McCain that mirrors Senator Obama's piece,' NYT Op-Ed editor David Shipley explained in an email late Friday to McCain's staff. 'I'm not going to be able to accept this piece as currently written.'

Considering this new Rasmussen poll...

The belief that reporters are trying to help Barack Obama win the fall campaign has grown by five percentage points over the past month. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey found that 49% of voters believe most reporters will try to help Obama with their coverage, up from 44% a month ago.

Even CNN's Howard Kurtz realizes that the media is in the bag for an Obama victory.

KURTZ: Sometimes the big, sprawling, undisciplined beast we cal the media have an impact just by showing up, the cameras magnifying everything in their view. Now, Barack Obama's overseas trip was always going to be a journalistic sensation, but the Illinois senator's campaign wasn't taking any chances.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

COURIC: By the way, I'll be reporting next week from the Middle East. We'll have the first one-on-one interview with Senator Obama.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ: Actually CBS' Lara Logan getting the first one-on-one interview today. But by dangling the offer of exclusive interviews with the candidate, exclusive for one night a piece, that is, the Obama team persuaded Katie Couric, Charlie Gibson and Brian Williams to trek halfway around the world to cover this trip. What that means, of course, is that the "CBS Evening News," "NBC Nightly News" and ABC's "World News" will be broadcast from Europe and the Middle East this week, throwing an even brighter spotlight on Barack's excellent adventure.

John McCain, meanwhile, was accompanied by zero anchors on his three foreign trips since wrapping up the Republican nomination in March. And that has the pundits debating whether the sheer volume of airtime and ink is tilting rather dramatically in Obama's direction.

Is it any wonder why newspapers and television news are losing their readers/viewers. If you are going to get opinion anyway - why not go to a blog or to Rush Limbaugh? After all - the only difference between Rush and the NY Times is the fact that Rush ADMITS his bias.

Whiplash II

Ed Morrissey has more fall out for Senator Obama today.

The New York Times editorial board went to bed with a virgin and woke up with a … well, a pro, in milder terms, or so they seem to imply in today’s unhappy missive. The editorial castigates Obama for his replacement of just about everything he has professed from January 2007 to May 2008 with his all-new, 50%-more-”centery” agenda that rejects everything that made him attractive to the Left in the first place. And they wonder where it will all stop:

To say that the NY Times is disillusioned with their candidate is a bit of an understatement.

On top of these perplexing shifts in position, we find ourselves disagreeing powerfully with Mr. Obama on two other issues: the death penalty and gun control.

Mr. Obama endorsed the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the District of Columbia’s gun-control law. We knew he ascribed to the anti-gun-control groups’ misreading of the Constitution as implying an individual right to bear arms. But it was distressing to see him declare that the court provided a guide to “reasonable regulations enacted by local communities to keep their streets safe.”

What could be more reasonable than a city restricting handguns, or requiring that firearms be stored in ways that do not present a mortal threat to children?

We were equally distressed by Mr. Obama’s criticism of the Supreme Court’s barring the death penalty for crimes that do not involve murder.

We are not shocked when a candidate moves to the center for the general election. But Mr. Obama’s shifts are striking because he was the candidate who proposed to change the face of politics, the man of passionate convictions who did not play old political games.

At first blush, it appears that the Times is taking the Senator to task here however the Logical Husband pointed out the following...

We knew he ascribed to the anti-gun-control groups’ misreading of the Constitution as implying an individual right to bear arms.

...and commented on the nice way that the Times used this as a tacit "he's not as socialist as you think he is" or "see he's more conservative than we are!" centrist endorsement. Now the Logical Husband grew up in New York and with the NY Times. He knows their style of doing things. He also has a New Yorkers tendency to be just a little cynically pragmatic.

It could very well be that the NY Times is mirroring the far lefts disillusionment with Senator Obama's campaign. It could really be that straight forward. However, it does give one pause....a reason to stop and think about what is really going on in the minds of the editorial board at the New York Times.

Earth To Alix

I've written about Channel 9's Alix Kendall a couple of times in the past. For the most part, she reports the news straight up - until we get into campaign season and then the partisan in her slips into her reports. Todays report was on the 2008 Senate race. As all most Minnesotans know, the DFL State Convention is the weekend and they will probably endorse Al Franken at said convention. In her report this morning about the Senate race, she mentioned that in addition to Franken, Jesse Ventura and Dean Barkley (Independence Party) were considering running to "replace Paul Wellstone who died in office. What Alix didn't mention is that Senator Paul Wellstone died during the campaign six years ago!

If it were not for the fact that Channel 9 has the most "competent" weather department I wouldn't watch this state and if it were not for weather and traffic reports I doubt I would watch local news at all. However, Alix makes it all worth it. She is an endless source of media bias material.

J'accuse!

While looking for examples of coverage of the allegations against AG Lori Swanson versus coverage of US AG Rachel Paulose I found this post from the Minnesota Lawyer Blog. The comments left mirror many of the allegations in Ms. Lawler's letter to Deputy Olson in her letter dated March 14 (and covered in detail by Gary Gross at LFR). The comments are all anonymous, but given what we know so far it is no secret why!

Anonymous said...
I am one of the attorneys who left the AGO for some of the reasons/concerns raised by Ms. Lawler. It is common knowledge in the Office that both Lori Swanson, as well as her predecessor, would often first decide what kind of lawsuits they wanted to bring (commonly based on whatever topic is hot in the media or being pursued by AGs in other states), assume that there MUST be someone operating in Minnesota to sue in this area, direct the staff attorneys to find a party to sue (or give them the names of parties to sue) and file a complaint within X time period and then orchestrate a big media splash and press conference to publicize the matter. While some people might applaud this as being "proactive," I had the same ethical concerns expressed by Ms. Lawler. Of course, my response to these questionable tactics was to simply leave the Office rather than "stir the pot" so to speak and be subject to involuntary reassignment or other retaliation. It is no wonder that the consumer enforcement division at the AGO (now "complex litigation") had 100% turnover in staff attorneys AND managers while I was employed at the Office. Now the staff attorneys who make up that division are primarily very young lawyers who don't have the experience or courage to challenge or question what they are being told to do, with the exception of Ms. Lawler. Kudos to Ms. Lawler for speaking out even though it will obviously cost her her job.

It is sad that the latest public vetting of the problems at the AGO aren't going to change anything (sorry Mr. Cohen). Believe me when I say that Swanson et al. have convinced themselves that they aren't doing anything wrong despite the continued hemorrhaging of attorneys and negative publicity and will defend their tactics to the death (otherwise known as the 2010 election year).

I would say that "hemorrhaging" is the correct term. According to Ms. Lawlers letter (and confirmed with sources close to the pending investigation) 52 lawyers have left the AGO since Lori Swanson took over. Given that the AGO employed 126 lawyers, that means that roughly 41% of the lawyers in that office let. That is a far greater percentage than left the US AGO which is what led to the initial allegations against Rachel Paulose.

Anonymous said...
Mr. Cohen--Having worked in the Minnesota AGO for several years (but no longer), and having worked on multistate cases, I appreciate what you are saying. AGs, like all politicians, prefer favorable press, and I agree that they sometimes may use less than "best practices" in terms of how they pick what cases to file, if they think they can get good press as a result.
However, I also think that Hatch and Swanson have taken that approach to a whole new level, and not a better one. Their attitude towards cases, in my observation, is much like their attitude towards their attorney staff--we were all interchangeable, like cogs in a wheel. And if one cog happened to manifest any independent thought, judgment or to protest (like Ms. Lawler), then the response was to simply remove the offending cog (or get it to quit) and replace it with another one that would do what it was told to do.
All too often, the Hatch and Swanson regimes have the same cavalier, wholly self-serving approach to case management--once the press glamour wore off on a case (which pretty much happened the day it was filed), then upper management lost interest, tended to not want to put appropriate resources towards it, and often drove the case towards settlement to just get rid of it. This didn't happen every single time, of course, but it happened way too often.
And that's what I hope people understand about this union issue--it's not just an employment law issue, as one high-ranking DFL'er has reportedly stated, but it's an issue about the quality of legal services that the State of Minnesota is getting from its own, in-house legal staff. Because if the staff attorneys aren't allowed to act like attorneys and exercise their professional judgment on behalf of their "client," which ultimately, is state agencies and the people of Minnesota, then the people aren't being served. No matter how many cases the AG files in a month.

Emphasis added. These are questions that seem to be getting asked only on blogs. That is what I was getting at in my last post. There are some serious questions being raised and our local media is curiously silent - someone needs to find out why.

If these allegations are indicative of the troubles at the AGO, then a new set of questions arise. How far down the managerial chain does this attitude go? If it is indicative of all of upper management, then who prosecutes this case? For these are the kinds of cases the AGO should be investigating!

Political Double-Standards?

I have never been a fan of unions - I have seen too many abuses (growing up in Chicago) by unions in their attempts to unionize businesses to tend to want to give then any leeway. That is why when the story of AG Lori Swanson's attempts to block the unionization of her office first surfaced, I gave her the benefit of the doubt. That was until Amy Lawler bravely came forward and told her story to the Eric Black at MinnPost and then subsequently was placed on "administrative leave" by the AG's office for doing so. It was at that point that I started paying attention to this case. The local televised media covered Lawler's suspension, but didn't dig any further into the story or her allegations. The Star Tribune devoted a couple of stories to the suspension but didn't dig much either. The St. Paul Pioneer Press didn't cover Lawler's allegations or suspension AT ALL. The only ones that really seemed interested in digging into the allegations raised by Lawler and others were MinnPost, Minnesota Public Radio, Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Delano) who has repeatedly asked Rep. Tony Sertich (DFL-Chisholm) to open legislative hearings on the issue and a multitude of center right blogs like Let Freedom Ring and the lefts favorite Minnesota Democrats Exposed.

Contrast that with the extensive coverage given to Rachel Paulose last fall. The Star Tribune had 20 stories on Paulose versus 7 on the Swanson allegations. KARE 11 was Paulose 22 - Lawler/Swanson 3 counting Friday's announcement of the Legislative Auditor's investigation. WDFL, er WCCO had 50 stories on the Paulose allegations to 3 for Lawler. KSTP had 32 stories on the Paulose allegations versus 4 for the Lawler suspension. Only the PiPress gave almost equal coverage to the stories.

So what is the difference between Lori Swanson and Rachel Paulose? Both are female lawyers who were high profile AG's - one state and on federal. Both are very aggressive - you have to be in their line of work. Both have (according allegations) rather brusque management styles. By all accounts, Ms. Paulose was a competent fairly well liked attorney who made a couple of mistakes and made amends for them. Ms. Swanson, on the other hand, is universally feared by her employees (see next post). She has been accused of asking her employees to falsify time cards, give improper advise to clients, file frivolous lawsuits and generally engage in ethically questionable behavior. So why the disparity in coverage?

The allegations against Ms. Swanson (see LFR where Gary has a copy of the letter sent to Deputy AG Olson), if accurate, are stunning in their scope. The letter is a peek at an office where political power was wielded like a weapon and woe to anyone who questioned the tactics taken or the orders given. It seems to me that this just the kind of story most reporters would give their eye teeth to have dropped in their laps and yet our local media seems curiously silent on the issue. Where are the investigative reporters in this town? Why has NO ONE outside of MinnPost, MPR and the blogosphere done any digging into this story? Why is the local media "covering up" for a DFL State AG when they were so eager to go after a Republican appointee US AG? These are questions that all media consumers need to be asking themselves.

More and more our local media outlets continue to give the impression that they are nothing more than a PR arm for DFL Party. They continue to lose viewers and readers and they don't seem to understand why. While I don't know what it will take for them to finally "get it", I simply can not let slide the most recent example of media bias that Minnesotans have come to expect from their local media.

A bit of housecleaning....I must correct a little sloppiness on my part. Rachel Paulose was not a USAG she was the US Attorney for the District of Minnesota. My apologies for the mistake.

Hang 'Em High

Much was said in recent weeks about the "punishment" that has been meted out to the "Over-ride Six". Now we see that they are not the only ones being "punished" by the folks back home.

There were no embarrassing scandals or ugly fights at the House District 58 convention last weekend, but, still, two longtime incumbents -- Reps. Joe Mullery in 58A and Willie Dominguez in 58B -- walked away without getting the official nod from their own party. Instead, activists in 58B chose Bobbie Joe Champion, and Wellstone Action staffer and Minneapolis School Board Member Peggy Flanagan forced Mullery to a no-endorsement, kicking off a primary race.

Here you have two DFL incumbents who have voted pretty much in lock step with their caucus and yet they could not regain the endorsement of their BPOU.

I expect Lori Sturdevant's scathing indictment of the SD 58 convention to be in the Star Tribune in coming days......NOT.

More Liberal Media Bias

As if we really needed more ammo.....

Take a look at the opening paragraphs of these stories about Govern Elliot Spitzers current legal troubles.....

Star Tribune

Gov. Eliot Spitzer, the crusading politician who built his career on rooting out
corruption, apologized Monday after he was accused of involvement in a
prostitution ring. He did not elaborate on the scandal, which drew calls for his
resignation.

NY Times

Gov. Eliot Spitzer has been caught on a federal wiretap arranging to meet with a
high-priced prostitute at a Washington hotel last month, according to a person
briefed on the federal investigation.

CNN

New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer is under investigation for allegedly meeting with a
prostitute in a Washington hotel, two sources with knowledge of the
investigation tell CNN.

MSNBC

Gov. Eliot Spitzer apologized to his family and the public on Monday, but did
not not elaborate on a bombshell report that he has been involved in a
prostitution ring.

Now check the opening paragraphs in these stories....

CNN

A Republican senator pleaded guilty earlier this month to a misdemeanor
disorderly conduct charge stemming from his arrest at the Minneapolis-St. Paul
International Airport, according to state criminal records.

CBS News

Republicans and Democrats are marshaling potential candidates to run for Rep.
Rick Renzi's congressional seat in case the Arizona Republican bows to pressure
to resign in the wake of an FBI raid last week on his family business.

CNN Again

Embattled Republican Sen. Larry Craig will announce his resignation from the
Senate Saturday, a GOP source in Idaho said Friday.

NY Times

Senator Larry Craig, Republican of Idaho, will ask a judge this week to reverse
his conviction for soliciting sex from an undercover police officer in a
Minneapolis airport bathroom. He should prevail. Mr. Craig did nothing illegal,
and the law he was convicted under should be held unconstitutional.

ABC News

Republican Rep. Rick Renzi was indicted Friday on charges of extortion, wire
fraud, money laundering and other matters in an Arizona land swap scam that
allegedly helped him collect hundreds of thousands of dollars in payoffs.

In every single one of the Spitzer stories it takes 4 to 6 paragraphs for the news organizations to off-handed mention that Spitzer was a Democrat where every single one of the Renzi and Craig stories listed above it is in the opening paragraph!

This bias is not limited to the treatment of Spitzer, Craig or Renzi. One only needs to Google William Jefferson and Tom Delay to find even more examples!

This is yet another drip, drip, drip in the further erosion of media credibility...and they wonder why people chose to get their news from other sources.

Happy To Pay....

In the mornings, while getting the Junior Logician ready for school, I usually put on one of the local news broadcasts to see what the weather is going to be for the day. This morning, I had on Fox 9 News (as I usually do) and I heard something that actually made me stop what I was doing. Going into commercial, anchor Tom Butler, teased a story that was coming up about the Transit Bill. While their reporting on this story was not unexpected, it was what Mr. Butler said that brought me up short.

...and coming up, now that the House and the Senate have over-ridden the
Governors veto on the Transportation bill, find out how much in new taxes you’ll
have to pay...

The emphasis that was put on the "you'll" was what caught me as there appeared to be a certain amount of joy, happyness or excitement in his voice. It struck me as just a little odd that a supposed "neutral observer" would take such delight in the fact that the taxpayers of Minnesota had just been told to "bend over and grab your ankles" by the state Legislature!

What really got to me though was that for the first time in this whole debate, a local media outlet actually listed out many of the new taxes including the 1/4% metro area sales tax increase that is solely for transit. This is the first time that I have heard any of the local media outlets talk about the fact that light rail was going to be a beneficiary of this bill. Heck if you listened to people like Rep. Lieder and Rep. Abler (more on him later) you would have thought that all monies for this bill were going to make our roads "safer" and that those who told you otherwise (like talk radio and bloggers) didn't know what they were talking about!

This in a nutshell is why the voters of MN are looking to new media outlets for information about what is happening in the legislature. They realize that the local media are willing participants with the DFL in pushing these tax increases down our throats.

Stay tuned to True North - there are two more BIG tax bills that are coming. Rep. Lenczewski's Tax bill and the Universal Health Care bills are both supposed to come to the floor this week and True North will be there to cover it for you.

Who's Afraid of the Big, Bad....

Conservative? Well apparently Progressives are (HT Capt Ed)

The New York Times’ hiring of Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol to write for its op-ed page caused a frenzy in the liberal blogosphere Friday night, with threats of canceling subscriptions and claims that the Gray Lady had been hijacked by neo-cons.
But Times editorial page editor Andy Rosenthal sees things differently.
Rosenthal told Politico shortly after the official announcement Saturday that he fails to understand “this weird fear of opposing views.”

Rosenthal is finally starting to see what many on the right have known for a long time.

What is funny (ironic) is this comment.

“The idea that The New York Times is giving voice to a guy who is a serious, respected conservative intellectual — and somehow that’s a bad thing,” Rosenthal added. “How intolerant is that?”

I can't argue with that comment at all.

Despot of the Year

Time Magazine is out with their "Person of the Year" and this year's is a doozy! Time's Person of the Year is Vladimir Putin and the only thing more stunning than the choice was the reason for the choice.

TIME's Person of the Year is not and never has been an honor. It is not an endorsement. It is not a popularity contest. At its best, it is a clear-eyed recognition of the world as it is and of the most powerful individuals and forces shaping that world—for better or for worse. It is ultimately about leadership—bold, earth-changing leadership. Putin is not a boy scout. He is not a democrat in any way that the West would define it. He is not a paragon of free speech. He stands, above all, for stability—stability before freedom, stability before choice, stability in a country that has hardly seen it for a hundred years.

It is how the former KGB agent achieves that stability that should have put the Time editors off of this nomination. People who question Putin's tactics have died in some rather creative ways along with being handled in some of the more mundane ways.

Putin has moved Russia away from democracy and openness back to the old days of dictatorship and fear. This is what Time feels is leadership. Then again, they also considered Hitler and Stalin to be a leaders too so I suppose that this is not too much of a surprise.

Further Thoughts on the O'Donnell Interview

I have a few more thoughts on the Hugh Hewitt/Lawrence O'Donnell interview that I wrote about in my last post. I wanted to make sure that the "Islam" remarks stood on their own because they are such an important admission. Now I would like to focus on a couple of other salient points that Hewitt made.

Hugh nailed O'Donnell in a major flip-flop. First O'Donnell said this, about the Mormon practice of polygamy. First O'Donnell says that Governor Romney needs to address the practice of polygamy...

HH: I want to ask you, Lawrence. You mentioned on the McLaughlin Group that Mitt Romney’s great-grandfather’s polygamy was an issue. Can you explain to me why?
LO’D: No, well, he…remember the line in the speech, this is the faith of my fathers, not just the…
HH: do you believe by that he meant…
LO’D: …not just George. Did he mean his great-grandfather?
HH: Do you think he did? You asserted that he did.
LO’D: Yup, I do.
HH: You…
LO’D: I do think…if I said that, I’d mean my great-grandfather.
HH: You believe that Mitt Romney was endorsing polygamy in his speech?
LO’D: I wouldn’t cut it off with my great-grandfather. No, I don’t think he endorses polygamy...

Then he turns around and says that Romney does not need to attone for the beliefs of his great-grandfather...

HH: Let me break in here. Now Lawrence, given your standard…
LO’D: Yeah.
HH: Are Catholics responsible for the anti-Semitism in the Church’s past?
LO’D: Yes.
HH: They are?
LO’D: Oh, current Catholics? No. No, not current Catholics, no.
HH: Well, do current Catholics need to step up and explain that when they say
they’re…
LO’D: I don’t think Romney’s responsible for his great-grandfather.

Then, when O'Donnell realizes that Hugh trapped him, he pulled out an old favorite of his....

LO’D: I think he’s lying about his great-grandfather.
HH: I just want to follow through. You laid down a principle, and I want to follow through. As recently as…
LO’D: I think Romney’s a liar about his great-grandfather. That’s what I think.

Gee....this sounds vaguely familiar....

Now I will be the first to admit that I have serious theological issues with the faith of Mitt Romney's fathers. However, I would certainly not go about addressing them in the manner that Lawrence O'Donnell did on both the McLaughlin Report OR on the Hugh Hewitt show. For as much as people went all gonzo about Don Imus' "nappy headed ho's" comment (as well they should have), I find it just a wee bit interesting that Lawrence O'Donnell still has a job at MSNBC for his rather bigoted remarks about Mormonism (among others). It's time for MSNBC to do the right thing and take this bigot off of the air, once and for all.

Controlling What You Read

Last week, I wrote a little something about "Pastor" Nick Coleman and his screed against Archbishop John Nienstadt calling homosexuality a "grave sin". Needless to say, I was not the only one. Well today, I got this in the inbox.

The editors at the Star Tribune appear to be censoring the public's outrage in response to Nick Coleman’s recent attack piece against Archbishop John Nienstedt. The newspaper has published just six letters in response to Coleman’s column (besides Archbishop Nienstedt’s formal response). And four of the six letters were in support of Coleman. But here's the most revealing fact exposing the newspaper's bias -- NOT ONE of the over 60 letters critical of Coleman's column submitted through our online letter writing tool were published by the Star Tribune.

Emphasis in the original. Minnesota Majority, an admittedly conservative organization, has taken advantge of the technology available in order to track letters sent through their tool. It is a really slick set up. This tracking has confirmed what a lot of conservatives have long suspected...that the Star Tribune editorial board will not print conservative letters. Oh they will say that they don't get them or that the letter was in some way or another "unpublishable" but they will gladly print the most spittle flecked leftist conspiracy rant while rejecting conservative letters. I even had an e-mail exchange with one of their LTE screeners who accused me of all kinds of malfeasance for questioning their motives on letters and editorial policy. After one email that was particularily nasty, I reminded the screener that she WAS talking to a customer at which point the correspondence ended.

One of these years, the Portland Avenue Politbureau will get it. They will get the fact that the readers know that they are a bunch of rabid, unrepentant leftists posing as unbiased journalists and that readers are tired of them attempting to "control" the news. They will understand that they can no longer control the message that we hear because there are a multitude of choices out there for the average news consumer. They will understand that their advertisers won't spend money on advertising in a paper that does not get read! Unfortunately, it will probably be too late for them to recuperate...

Random Snark Alert!

I was packing yet another box of kitchen stuff and listening to Alix Kendall on the the Fox 9 Morning News when the impossible happened. Alix actually reported that violence in Iraq is down 55% since the beginning of the troop surge! And her head didn't explode!

It must be getting cold in a very hot place right now.

This is what a real newspaper looks like.

I have long lamented the lack of a "real" newspaper in this town. The Star Tribune has long been (we were warned about the Strib's bias when we moved here almost 14 years ago) the PR arm of the DFL Party. That is why I was happy to see this commentary from my home town paper. The fact that it took down the need for a piece of Democratic pet legislation is even more amazing.

Politicians often are accused of being irrelevant. But rarely has a group of them been so intent on proving that charge than the senators who voted last week for the "The Matthew Shepard Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2007."

This bill is supposed to be a brave and pioneering piece of legislation. According to the Human Rights Campaign, a gay-rights organization, "Congress has taken an historic step forward and moved our country closer to the realization that all Americans, including the GLBT [gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender] community, are part of the fabric of our nation."

The bill, passed by the Senate on Thursday, is named for a gay man beaten to death in Wyoming in 1998. In explaining the need for this bill, cosponsor Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., declared, "What happened to Matthew should happen to no one."

You know what? He's right. Which is why murder is against the law, even
in Wyoming, and why Shepard's attackers are serving sentences (life in prison) that would not be any longer if this law had been in effect then.

Emphasis mine. The point highlighted above is the main reason that Conservatives oppose "hate crimes" legislation. Another good reason is this.

It targets crimes based on a host of illegitimate factors, including the
victim's race, religion or national origin, as well as "gender, sexual
orientation, gender identity, or disability." Some of the latter categories have
earned the bill the fervent denunciation of the Traditional Values Coalition for
allegedly "catering to the homosexual/drag queen lobby."

That may win it the endorsement of Rudy Giuliani and John Travolta, but
the bill has other shortcomings. The first is the defining defect of hate-crimes
bills: It is intended to provide extra penalties for criminals who think
incorrect thoughts.

Emphasis again mine. It is already illegal to kill, maim, assualt or steal from someone. Adding extra punishment for "thought" is antithetical to everything our Founding Fathers believed in. However, Mr. Chapman hits on a point that I had forgotten about. This kind of legislation has already been ruled as "Unconstitutional" by the Supreme Court.

Back in 2000, the Supreme Court struck down a major part of another high-minded statute, the Violence Against Women Act, which allowed anyone attacked because of her gender to sue the attacker in federal court. The reason the court gave for overturning the law was simple: The Constitution doesn't give Congress the power to legislate against crimes of a purely local nature.

Said the court, "We can think of no better example of the police power, which the founders denied the national government and reposed in the states, than the suppression of violent crime and the vindication of its victims." Only if such crimes are clearly connected to interstate commerce -- which is rarely -- can Washington intervene.

So if Congress can't legislate on violence against women, how can it legislate on violence against women, gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transvestites, transsexuals and the disabled? The truth is, it can't -- except when such offenses are connected in some way to interstate commerce.

I grew up with the Chicago Tribune. While many in Chicago may say that there is a "bias" in the editorial pages, the bias does not leak into the news pages as blatently as it does in the Star Tribune. It is honest and thoughful commentary like this that has earned the Chicago Tribune the laurels it has earned in it's 160 year history. I hope that the new owners of the Star Tribune will continue to publish more balanced commentary like this in the future.

She's BAAAACK....

Coleen Rowley is back in the news, thanks to this puff piece in todays St. Paul Pioneer Press.

On a busy Eagan street corner, a former FBI wiretap specialist is
not-so-secretly hoisting and waving banners, demanding: "Support the
Constitution - End the War - Support the Troops - End the War - Support the
Bridges - End the War."

OK - so now the bridge collapse was caused by the war????? Oy vey!

Her trademark hyperactivity may have played more than a small hand in
dooming her 2006 congressional bid against U.S. Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., an
ardent conservative. Out-funded 2-to-1, Rowley's failed campaign required her to
take out a second mortgage on her Apple Valley home.

First off what doomed her campaign was her complete and utter failure to connect with any of the 2nd District voters that were not the far left anti-war crowd. I recall seeing Coleen at the Scott County Fair last year. She and her husband walked into the fairgrounds just ahead of me. She did not try to engage any of the fairgoers that were around us - they just walked straight in. I saw them again, about an hour later, sitting on a bench tucked between two food booths...again not talking to anyone around then and just yards away from two very crowded dining areas that were full of potential voters.

These days, Rowley, 52, is mired in almost $40,000 of personal debt, irked by
what she feels is complacency in the public and the media, and determined to
never, ever again run for public office.

Uh yeah - the media is so complacent....that is why they PiPress is running this little fluff piece on you right Coleen?

Today at 1:30 p.m., Rowley and her husband, Ross, will join the "Out of
Iraq! End the War Now!" march from the Cathedral of St. Paul to the state
Capitol. The march, organized by a coalition of anti-war groups, is expected to
draw peace activists by the hundreds.

"If nobody utilizes their rights, it's
like muscles: They atrophy," Rowley said. "People may think (protest is) silly,
but it gives people an outlet."

Several of my fellow True North compatriots are also exercising their rights to protest people like Coleen. I'm sure they will have pictures and video soon.The puff piece then went back to the subject of Coleen's Quixotic crusade for Congress.

...With Ross, a stay-at-home dad, helping behind the scenes, she ran
against Kline in the 2nd Congressional District, which includes most of
Republican-leaning Dakota County.

She lost. And big.

"Even a tidal wave couldn't lift this leaking rowboat," wrote a political
writer for the Minneapolis-based alternative weekly newspaper, City Pages, just
after the election.

The 16-point poll difference between Rowley and Kline wasn't the only
campaign scar. She doesn't laugh when she says that the two youngest of her four
children - son Jeb, 12, and daughter Meg, 14 - will be paying their own way
through college.

I again go back to my comments about Coleen's appearance at the Scott County Fair. We ran into her many times during the campaign at local parades and events. Every time she was there she was aloof and almost unapproachable - not a good thing when you are trying to get people to vote for you.

For the life of me, I can't figure out why this is "news". There are a lot of people at the Code Pink/WAMM/Anti-War Committee protests today. Coleen was just one of many (according to preliminary reports)...why focus on her? Could it be that this is our local presses way of giving free publicity to the anti-war rally by focusing on one of the movements fallen "heros"? Coleen (and the anti-war movements) calls for defeat in Iraq were rejected by the electorate in the 2nd district. However, that does not stop our local media from fulfilling their roles as the PR organ for the defeat at all costs crowd!