THE FILIBUSTER SESSION

Well, at least more Americans know that Democrats are filibustering George Bush's nominees to federal appeals court benches. Democrats are saying that these candidates don't meet the approval of the American people. What a crock. California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown, whom Bush nominated to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, gets 76% of the vote from the liberal voting population of California --- and Democrats say that she's out of the mainstream?

The purpose of this marathon session engineered in the Senate was to wake the American people up. It won't work. Trust me, Americans were far more interested in finding an internet site where they could watch the Paris Hilton sex video* than they were in trying to figure out what the Democrats and Republicans were up to in Washington.

This is all very boring, and very very important. It is clear that politicians have expanded the reach and power of the Imperial Federal Government far beyond anything contemplated by our founding fathers or set forth in our Constitution. You could never find anything in the constitution, for instance, that could be construed to allow the federal government to punish a citizen of some state for a crime committed under the laws of that state simply because of what the citizen was thinking when he committed that crime. Nor could you find anything in our constitution that permits a local government to discriminate for or against a citizen on the basis of skin color -- a practice that today's courts have embraced.

For decades liberals have been unable to enact some of the more important parts of their leftist agenda in the legislative arena. To enact their agenda they have had to rely on activist judges who would ignore the constitution to implement liberal goals. George Bush has a nasty proclivity to appoint federal judges who believe that our Constitution is, indeed, the supreme law of the land. Liberal initiatives cannot stand constitutional muster, and this means that they will not survive a federal appeals court judge who strictly construes our Constitution. Thus, they must be blocked.

Just listen to California hyper-leftist Diane Feinstein. One of her objections to Janice Rogers Brown is that she is very protective of property rights. Evidently liberal democrats feel that an appreciation of property rights is "out of the mainstream."

Many of these Demcorats are saying that they're not doing anything to George Bush's appointments that Republicans didn't do to Clinton's appointments. They're lying. I could not find one instance in our history where either party conducted a filibuster in the Senate to prevent a vote on a judicial confirmation where that judge had already been approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee and where there were a majority of votes on the Senate floor to confirm.

Our Constitution gives the Senate the right of advice and consent on judicial nominees. The Senate is prepared to do just that. The Senate sits ready to confirm these nominees, but Democrats are using a Senate rule to prevent that vote from taking place.

It's too bad Americans don't care as much about this as they do their local high school football team.

The Great Neal Boortz!


By the way,

Quote:Trust me, Americans were far more interested in finding an internet site where they could watch the Paris Hilton sex video* than they were in trying to figure out what the Democrats and Republicans were up to in Washington.

He just didn't know how right he was.

Quote:Many of these Demcorats are saying that they're not doing anything to George Bush's appointments that Republicans didn't do to Clinton's appointments.  They're lying.  I could not find one instance in our history where either party conducted a filibuster in the Senate to prevent a vote on a judicial confirmation where that judge had already been approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee and where there were a majority of votes on the Senate floor to confirm.

You really ought to look further than Foxnews.com in order to find FACTS before you start shooting your mouth off about things you do not know, Mssr.

Order and the Courts
By E.J. Dionne Jr.

Today is the second anniversary of President Bush's nomination of Miguel Estrada to the U.S. Court of Appeals.

Republicans claim it's outrageous that Senate Democrats are filibustering Estrada's nomination and won't just fall in line behind all of President Bush's judicial nominees. But if the Democrats simply let everyone through, they would have no claim to being a legitimate opposition.

Here are some facts on judicial nominations. The number of Bush circuit court nominees the Senate has confirmed: 22. The number of Bush nominees confirmed to the district courts: 101. The number of Bush judicial nominees currently being filibustered: 2. The claim that Democrats are being obstructionist: priceless. And laughable.

The Republican assault on Senate Democrats for using filibusters to block those two circuit court nominees -- Estrada and Texas State Supreme Court Judge Priscilla Owen -- is inconsistent with the GOP's own past behavior on presidential nominations.

Under Senate rules, it takes 60 votes in the 100-member body to shut down a filibuster. That means that those who engage in the practice are insisting that an issue is so important it should take a supermajority to reach a result.

Republicans have been happy to make this claim on nominations when Democrats were in the White House. They famously used a filibuster to kill Lyndon Johnson's nomination of Abe Fortas as chief justice in 1968. They had no qualms about using the filibuster to kill President Clinton's nomination of Henry Foster as surgeon general in 1995. Sam Brown, a leader of the movement against the Vietnam War, saw his ambassador-level nomination to head the American delegation to the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe blocked by a filibuster in 1994.

And filibusters aside, Republicans certainly didn't defer to all of Clinton's judicial nominations. Fifty-five Clinton judicial nominees never got a hearing and 10 more never got a vote in the Judiciary Committee.

So Republicans, including many now still serving in the Senate, once thought it perfectly appropriate to filibuster nominations by Democratic presidents. Now they are declaring their earlier view inoperative where Bush's judges are concerned.

Maybe that's why Republicans left it to two freshmen, Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, to put out word that they were considering filing a preposterous lawsuit to block filibusters of Bush's judicial nominees.

Republicans claim to be strict constructionists who oppose reading into the Constitution words that aren't there. That has not stopped Chambliss from arguing that because the Constitution requires a two-thirds majority to approve treaties but does not mention this for judicial nominees, the "implication" is that only a simple majority should be required for judges. "Where it is silent means it only requires a majority vote," Chambliss told the newspaper Roll Call.

So much for strict construction. Chambliss's view of the Constitution is about as accurate as the content of the wretched advertisements he ran against former senator Max Cleland, the disabled Vietnam hero he defeated last year.

This sudden Republican respect for simple majorities is remarkable in other respects. "If majority rule were the golden rule," says Sen. Charles E. Schumer, a New York Democrat, referring to Republicans, "then they'd be supporting Al Gore for president and be for abolishing the electoral college."

Schumer has suggested a way to end gridlock and partisanship over judicial nominations. He notes that Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution says that appointments should be made "with the advice and consent of the Senate." Today's problems are rooted partly in the fact that there is no formal mechanism through which a president can hear the Senate's advice.

Schumer proposes the creation of bipartisan nominating commissions, similar to those used for judgeships in many states, to put forward nominees for district and circuit courts. Such nominees, he says, would be easily confirmed, and would likely be less ideological than either liberals or conservatives might prefer.

"I believe that judges should be moderate," Schumer says. "I remember when I was young arguing that judges shouldn't make law -- even in the days when they were making law I liked."

Whether Schumer's idea could work in practice, he's identified the problem correctly. There is a desperate need now for moderate judges and for less partisanship in the nominating process. If Bush were willing to reach out and consult with his opponents, the judicial wars would end. Until that happens, the filibuster is the only way to prevent the president from creating a federal judiciary dominated by ideologues of his own persuasion, appointed to satisfy his political base.

You really ought to read all posts so you can ascertain where that actually came from.

....it wasn't from Fox News. It was from Neal Boortz, a Libertarian talk show host that also holds a Juris Doctorate.

<a href='http://boortz.com/nuze/index.html' target='_blank'>Neal's Nuze</a>

So does anyone know where I can locate clips from the famous Paris Hilton Sex Tape?

metro6775 Wrote:So does anyone know where I can locate clips from the famous Paris Hilton Sex Tape?

Well, it wasn't yet on Kazaa last night. :D

Quote:2003 The Washington Post Company

You should expand your scope yourself Joe. Reading only liberal rags tends to taint ones vision.

Hey rick, what makes a rag "liberal" or "non-liberal"? I think I know the answer to the question but I want to see what you have to say.

BTW, if anyone is interested, the Dems at the capitol have blocked only six (6) federal judgship appointments by the Bush Administration. They have blocked six (6) out of 164! Yeah, those Dems aren't playing fair are they?

The GOP has all the power. They have the House, the Senate, the Supreme Court and the White House and all they do is moan and groan and whine and complain.

This liberal rag....that liberal....ooh the durn liberals.....here we go with some more liberal nonsense.....damn those liberals, don't they know we only want one party in this government.....

Look at what you read for an answer, it is really that simple. I bet you get all your news from papers like the Post, NYT or mags like Newsweek. If you cannot see the slant towards the dems, then you are not looking without your liberal glasses.

Yeah, those multi-billion dollar companies are LOOKING TO DESTROY THE FABRIC OF OUR SOCIETY! SOMEBODY SOUND THE ALARM!

Hey Rick, you can get news from other places besides Rush/Sean/Neal's mouth!
:chair:

Neal Boortz is a conservative Libertarian, Kev. Despite your two pole thinking, there is a difference. And I didn't mean it really came from Fox news, but really, it all comes from the same place anyway. The Cons daily parrot line.

POLLY WANT A CRACKER?

See little buddy, that is where you are wrong again. I read a little bit of everything, including the post and newsweek.

rickheel Wrote:Look at what you read for an answer, it is really that simple. I bet you get all your news from papers like the Post, NYT or mags like Newsweek. If you cannot see the slant towards the dems, then you are not looking without your liberal glasses.

What exactly are the "liberal glasses" you are referring to? Are they like the 3D glasses people used to watch B-movies in the 1950s? Where can I get some of these glasses?
You've piqued my curiosity.

Other than that, Rick, can you provide any concrete examples that would illustrate any of these rags' liberalness? If you cannot, then your criticisms are invalid. It is like saying "boo" in response to something you see at a football game. Without qualifying your claim, you are not really making a valid statement about the Post or the NYT.
It is like someone says "the New York Times" and Rickheel goes "booo." That is what your above statements are like.

Now, don't get mad at what I told you, I'm merely pointing this out so, in the future, we can move along with this discussion. Until you make valid statements with some quality, i.e. concrete examples or links to what you are talking about, you are not really saying anything other than "boo" and you are not adding to this discussion.

At one time I took the time to find things when the person I was discussing things with was civil. Most of the times thes threads turn into pissing matches.
Here is an example of admitted bias from the head of NPR. There are some fine examples of leanings in this article.

NPR admits a liberal bias
Brent Bozell (archive)


October 22, 2003 | Print | Send


National Public Radio is properly understood, even by the media, as radio by and for liberals, not the general public. As Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz puts it, the media landscape stretches "from those who cheer Fox to those who swear by NPR."

The only ones who seem not to know that the left has a massive, taxpayer-funded radio network of 700 affiliates are the liberals trying to sell investors on their own private-sector talk-radio network. A recent PBS "NewsHour" story on talk radio turned ridiculous when reporter Terence Smith allowed liberal-network booster Jon Sinton to proclaim: "Every day in America on the 45 top-rated talk radio stations, there are 310 hours of conservative talk. There is a total of five hours of talk that comes from the other side of the aisle."

Don't buy that for a minute. The key word in that sentence is "top-rated" stations. Sinton's upset that conservatives apparently dominate "top-rated" talk. That doesn't mean NPR doesn't have hundreds of hours of liberal talk shows, not to mention liberal "news" shows. It's just not "top-rated."

Last week, NPR's own official ombudsman, Jeffrey Dvorkin, admitted a liberal bias in NPR's talk programming. The daily program "Fresh Air with Terry Gross" -- a 60-minute talk show about the arts, literature and also politics -- airs on 378 public-radio stations across the fruited plain. Gross recently became a hot topic on journalism Web sites for first having a friendly, giggly interview with "satirist" Al Franken, promoting his obnoxious screed against conservatives on Sept. 3, and then on Oct. 8, unloading an accusatory, hostile interview on Bill O'Reilly's show. She pressed the Fox host to respond to the obnoxious attacks of Franken and other critics. Dvorkin ruled: "Unfortunately, the (O'Reilly) interview only served to confirm the belief, held by some, in NPR's liberal media bias ... by coming across as a pro-Franken partisan rather than a neutral and curious journalist, Gross did almost nothing that might have allowed the interview to develop."

The news reports on NPR should be cause for greater public concern. Under the guise of "objective news" reporting, the left is actively advancing its political agenda. On the Oct. 17 "Morning Edition," host Bob Edwards launched into a long "news" report on the flaws of the Bush foreign policy, observing: "Overall, the policies of the United States are still very unpopular around the world. The Bush Doctrine, a preference for unilateral military action and a disdain for multinational diplomacy, is under scrutiny more than ever." The Middle East "road map" was "in tatters," Iraq and Afghanistan were "highly unstable." NPR may as well have suggested it was time for a different president.

Reporter Mike Shuster was intent on driving home the theme that the Bush foreign policy may (read: we hope) one day be analyzed as an utter failure. His three primary, supposedly nonpartisan "experts" were Ivo Daalder, a member of Clinton's National Security Council; Michael Mandelbaum, a foreign policy adviser to the 1992 Clinton campaign; and John Mearshimer, a regular critic of Bush foreign policy who argued in Foreign Policy magazine that Iraq should have remained under "vigilant containment," which we could also describe as maintaining a murderous tyrant in power. Their controversial views and Clinton connections were not developed by NPR.

Perhaps the biggest public-relations problems for NPR come when its liberal reporters hit the weekend talk-show circuit and let their opinions fly wildly. On Oct. 18, NPR legal reporter Nina Totenberg pronounced from her regular panelist perch on the TV show "Inside Washington" that General Jerry Boykin, who sermonized in Christian churches with the shocking, less-than-Unitarian message that Christianity is true and other creeds are false, should be fired.

Well, that's not the way it came out. First, Totenberg said Boykin's remarks were "seriously bad stuff," and then she said, "I hope he's not long for this world." Host Gordon Peterson joked, "What is this, The Sopranos?" Withdrawing to damage-control mode, Totenberg said she didn't mean she hoped he would die, just that he shouldn't last long "in his job."

But it's Totenberg who ought to fear for her job with these outbreaks of hate speech. Totenberg used this very same TV show to wish in 1995 that if the "Good Lord" knew justice, Senator Jesse Helms will "get AIDS from a transfusion, or one of his grandchildren will get it."

It's awfully ironic that a woman who has spent 30 years saying outrageous liberal things on the taxpayer dime is now attacking a general on the grounds that there ought to be some things government officials cannot say and keep their jobs. The concern over these Boykin remarks should not be about the separation of church and state. It ought to be about the separation of National Public Radio from the state.


Brent Bozell is President of Media Research Center, a TownHall.com member group.

At one time I took the time to find things when the person I was discussing things with was civil. Most of the times thes threads turn into pissing matches.
Here is an example of admitted bias from the head of NPR. There are some fine examples of leanings in this article.

NPR admits a liberal bias
Brent Bozell (archive)


October 22, 2003 | Print | Send


National Public Radio is properly understood, even by the media, as radio by and for liberals, not the general public. As Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz puts it, the media landscape stretches "from those who cheer Fox to those who swear by NPR."

The only ones who seem not to know that the left has a massive, taxpayer-funded radio network of 700 affiliates are the liberals trying to sell investors on their own private-sector talk-radio network. A recent PBS "NewsHour" story on talk radio turned ridiculous when reporter Terence Smith allowed liberal-network booster Jon Sinton to proclaim: "Every day in America on the 45 top-rated talk radio stations, there are 310 hours of conservative talk. There is a total of five hours of talk that comes from the other side of the aisle."

Don't buy that for a minute. The key word in that sentence is "top-rated" stations. Sinton's upset that conservatives apparently dominate "top-rated" talk. That doesn't mean NPR doesn't have hundreds of hours of liberal talk shows, not to mention liberal "news" shows. It's just not "top-rated."

Last week, NPR's own official ombudsman, Jeffrey Dvorkin, admitted a liberal bias in NPR's talk programming. The daily program "Fresh Air with Terry Gross" -- a 60-minute talk show about the arts, literature and also politics -- airs on 378 public-radio stations across the fruited plain. Gross recently became a hot topic on journalism Web sites for first having a friendly, giggly interview with "satirist" Al Franken, promoting his obnoxious screed against conservatives on Sept. 3, and then on Oct. 8, unloading an accusatory, hostile interview on Bill O'Reilly's show. She pressed the Fox host to respond to the obnoxious attacks of Franken and other critics. Dvorkin ruled: "Unfortunately, the (O'Reilly) interview only served to confirm the belief, held by some, in NPR's liberal media bias ... by coming across as a pro-Franken partisan rather than a neutral and curious journalist, Gross did almost nothing that might have allowed the interview to develop."

The news reports on NPR should be cause for greater public concern. Under the guise of "objective news" reporting, the left is actively advancing its political agenda. On the Oct. 17 "Morning Edition," host Bob Edwards launched into a long "news" report on the flaws of the Bush foreign policy, observing: "Overall, the policies of the United States are still very unpopular around the world. The Bush Doctrine, a preference for unilateral military action and a disdain for multinational diplomacy, is under scrutiny more than ever." The Middle East "road map" was "in tatters," Iraq and Afghanistan were "highly unstable." NPR may as well have suggested it was time for a different president.

Reporter Mike Shuster was intent on driving home the theme that the Bush foreign policy may (read: we hope) one day be analyzed as an utter failure. His three primary, supposedly nonpartisan "experts" were Ivo Daalder, a member of Clinton's National Security Council; Michael Mandelbaum, a foreign policy adviser to the 1992 Clinton campaign; and John Mearshimer, a regular critic of Bush foreign policy who argued in Foreign Policy magazine that Iraq should have remained under "vigilant containment," which we could also describe as maintaining a murderous tyrant in power. Their controversial views and Clinton connections were not developed by NPR.

Perhaps the biggest public-relations problems for NPR come when its liberal reporters hit the weekend talk-show circuit and let their opinions fly wildly. On Oct. 18, NPR legal reporter Nina Totenberg pronounced from her regular panelist perch on the TV show "Inside Washington" that General Jerry Boykin, who sermonized in Christian churches with the shocking, less-than-Unitarian message that Christianity is true and other creeds are false, should be fired.

Well, that's not the way it came out. First, Totenberg said Boykin's remarks were "seriously bad stuff," and then she said, "I hope he's not long for this world." Host Gordon Peterson joked, "What is this, The Sopranos?" Withdrawing to damage-control mode, Totenberg said she didn't mean she hoped he would die, just that he shouldn't last long "in his job."

But it's Totenberg who ought to fear for her job with these outbreaks of hate speech. Totenberg used this very same TV show to wish in 1995 that if the "Good Lord" knew justice, Senator Jesse Helms will "get AIDS from a transfusion, or one of his grandchildren will get it."

It's awfully ironic that a woman who has spent 30 years saying outrageous liberal things on the taxpayer dime is now attacking a general on the grounds that there ought to be some things government officials cannot say and keep their jobs. The concern over these Boykin remarks should not be about the separation of church and state. It ought to be about the separation of National Public Radio from the state.


Brent Bozell is President of Media Research Center, a TownHall.com member group.

If you read this report without knowing what Arafat has been involved in, what would you opinion be?


by HonestReporting.com A comparison of the lives of Sharon and Arafat packs a lot of bias into 100 words.


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The complicated history of the Arab-Israeli conflict is difficult to transmit in a short newsbyte. Yet Newsweek-MSNBC recently attempted to encapsulate the personal histories of Yasir Arafat and Ariel Sharon in side-by-side chronologies.

The result is a lot of bias packed into 100 words.

Below is the full text of "A Tale of Two Enemies" which appeared in Newsweek (Dec. 17 edition) and on the MSNBC website - <a href='http://www.msnbc.com/news/669794.asp#BODY' target='_blank'>http://www.msnbc.com/news/669794.asp#BODY</a>

Newsweek-MSNBC describes Arafat simply as a "revolutionary," a "civil engineer," and a trailblazing diplomat who was the first to be accorded special status at the United Nations.

Yet nowhere is Arafat described as a founder of a terrorist organization, nor is there any mention of his connection to terror acts. In truth, that is Arafat's greatest claim to fame. He invented modern terrorism, and trained and served as a model for dozens of other terrorist organizations. Arafat's Fatah and PLO were responsible for thousands of deaths, airplane hijackings, bombings, mass murders -- and some of the most infamous terrorist outrages including the execution of American and Belgian diplomats, the Munich Olympics massacre, the Achilles Lauro hijacking, and mass murder attacks on civilians in Lod Airport, Ma'alot, Kiryat Shemone and more.

Newsweek-MSNBC further mentions that the PLO was "created to liberate Palestine." In fact, when Arafat joined the PLO in 1964, the West Bank and Gaza were fully in Arab hands, and the PLO's primary goal (as expressly stated in its covenant) was the annihilation of Israel.

* * *

By contrast, how does Newsweek-MSNBC describe Ariel Sharon?

Sharon is "aggressive" and "ruthless." He headed "Israel's invasion of Lebanon that kills 2,000 Palestinian refugees."

Is there really such a direct correlation between Sharon and the slaughter of Palestinians, as Newsweek-MSNBC implies? Newsweek-MSNBC should recall that Time Magazine got into legal hot water for making similar allegations against Sharon.

In truth, an official Israeli commission of inquiry absolved Sharon of direct responsibility for the deaths of refugees in Sabra and Shatilla. And Lebanese who served as agents of Syria at the time have recently admitted that Sharon and Israel were "set up" by Syria.

Further, Newsweek-MSNBC asserts that Sharon visited "Al Aqsa Mosque, sparking the second Palestinian intifada."

In fact, Sharon never visited the Al Aqsa Mosque; he toured the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif, but the mosques were not part of his visit. Furthermore, it is now common knowledge that Arafat planned his new war prior to Sharon's visit, as Al-Ayyam, the Palestinian Authority daily newspaper reported (December 6, 2000):

"Speaking at a symposium in Gaza, Palestinian Minister of Communications Imad el-Falouji confirmed that the Palestinian Authority had began preparations for the outbreak of the current intifada from the moment the Camp David talks concluded, this in accordance with instructions given by Chairman Arafat himself."

If you find the Newsweek-MSNBC item biased, write to:
letters@newsweek.com
world@msnbc.com
michael.moran@msnbc.com

The most effective method is to write a letter in your own words. Otherwise, use the points above as a basis.

== TEXT OF NEWSWEEK/MSNBC REPORT ==

ARAFAT AND SHARON: A TALE OF TWO ENEMIES

Dating from Arafat's earliest days as a guerrilla fighter in the Palestinian movement and Sharon's controversial history as an aggressive commander in a series of Israeli wars with the Arabs, the two leaders seem to have been heading for a final confrontation.

* * *

YASIR ARAFAT

1929: Born in Egypt. At 16 he starts smuggling arms to Palestine for use against the British and the Jews.

1948: Leaves school briefly to fight in Gaza during Arab-Israeli conflict.

1956-58: Graduates as a civil engineer. Settles in Kuwait. Forms Al Fatah with friends.

1964: Leaves Kuwait to be a revolutionary. Fatah joins PLO, a new umbrella group created to liberate Palestine.

1969: Named PLO chairman.

1974: Addresses U.N. General Assembly-the first time a non-head of state is invited.

1993: Holds secret peace talks with Yitzhak Rabin in Oslo.

1996-2000: Continues talks with Israel, but turns down Clinton-Barak peace plan.

* * *

ARIEL SHARON

1928: Born in Palestine.

1948-49: Heads an infantry in Israel's War of Independence.

1956-67: Fights in Sinai campaign and later in Six Day War; noticed for his military ability and ruthlessness.

1972-73: Leaves the Army for politics. Helps form Likud.

1981-82: Named Defense minister to Menachem Begin. Heads Israel's invasion of Lebanon that kills 2,000 Palestinian refugees.

1990: Speeds buildup of settlements in Palestinian territory as minister of Construction and Housing.

1998: Holds peace talks with Arafat as foreign minister.

2000: Visits Al Aqsa Mosque, sparking the second Palestinian intifada (uprising).

2001: Elected prime minister.

Newsweek Editor Admits Green Media Bias

Kevin Decorla-Souza
June 27, 2001


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Last Saturday, Evan Thomas, Assistant Managing Editor of Newsweek, revealed a dirty practice of the weekly magazine, further validating conservative claims that the news media is liberally biased. On CNN's Reliable Sources, Thomas confessed: "We launder our views through, quote, 'objective critics.' And certainly the press is pretty green, the press is pretty pro-environment and I don't think there's any question that they, as a body, feel that Bush is wrong on the environment. I'm excluding the conservative press - the Weekly Standard and so forth - but generally the press is pretty green and they're going to use the Europeans to take the Bushies to task."

This revelation comes as no surprise to critics of the media who have watched the press give increased attention to green activists on the global warming issue while virtually ignoring scientific skeptics who believe that the gloomy climate change scenarios are exaggerated or wrong. A recent analysis of televised stories on global warming by the Media Research Center found that the news media gave 6 times as much attention to proponents of global warming than to naysayers. Three broadcast networks, ABC, NBC and CBS completely excluded the opinions of global warming skeptics from their coverage. Despite the unanimous 95-0 vote against the Kyoto Protocol in the U.S. Senate, supporters of the treaty were given more than twice as much attention as those who agreed with Bush's decision to scrap the economically disastrous - and probably unnecessary and ineffective - treaty. Free Market opponents to the economic restrictions created by Kyoto were outnumbered by spokesmen for environmental organizations by a 20 to 3 margin in the news. The Media Research Center obtained these figures by analyzing 51 global warming stories that appeared on 5 major cable and broadcast evening news programs between Inauguration Day (January 20) and Earth Day (April 22).

Another interesting find by the Media Research Center was that none of the environmental spokesmen and activists were ever given the label "liberal" by journalists. Commenting on the intrinsic bias of the press in a May 24 editorial in the Wall Street Journal, Bernard Goldberg, a former correspondent for CBS News, said: "

Last one..........


Media Bias and
Campaign Finance

by J. Peter Mulhern

he biases of the elite media are too well documented to make good column fodder. Most journalists have a tribal attachment to the Democrat Party that transcends even ideology. This attachment permeates political reporting, reducing most of it to the sort of silly propaganda Tass and Pravda churned out before the Soviet Union crumbled.

Normally there

This log jam with respect to judicial nominees is the frontline in the war between conservatism and socialism. It really doesn't overstate things to compare it to the stalemate of the Great War.

The reason this has come about goes back to 1933 or so, when the deified Franklin Roosevelt attempt to break the S.Ct's strange notions concerning the limited powers of the federal government. Up to the time, the S.Ct struck one New Deal program after another, finding that they exceeded the authority of the federal government, as defined by the constitution. The deified Franklin, frustrated by this outrageous point of view, determined to break the court by increasing its membership and appointing new justices who, of course, would be more understanding of the good intentions of the "New Deal".

The plan failed, but the court buckled nonetheless. Where it once was a serious defender of the constitution, it thereafter gave carte blanche to anything the Rooseveltians wanted to do. You good Democrats can celebrate the Koramatzu (sp) decision as a landmark socialist decision.

Now the professional politicians in Congress soon recognized the enormous possibilities of unlimited government, and programs of all kinds became the rage. The bill would finally come due in the 70's and 80's, when the hapless fool Jimmy of Georgia had to face the effect of years of untrammeled and unlimited federal spending. The "New Deal" made gods of congressmen. With the unlimited power to regulate, tax and legislate, even as to the States themselve, there was much grovelling in Washington by what were once known as "citizens"

While this horror was occuring, socialists saw the enormous advantage of using the courts to circumvent the mess of public debate in getting the "right" things done. Since the S.Ct. had long abandoned any limits on its or the government's authority, it became just a matter of appointing the "right" justices. The Democrats in control of Congress, soon got this done. And so you have Roe and many other, lesser but not less disasterous decisions.

So for true conservatives, and Repubs are not conservatives, the fight about judicial appointments is not important, it is essential. What is happening now is merely a taste of what is to come.

What was done to Bork was shameful. We conservatives have every right to give in turn, and if it should mean the destruction of the present federal judiciary, fine. They are not judges, they are liars and fools, and they know nothing or care nothing for the constitution and constitutional government.

The only thing better would be the destruction of the federal government as we know it now. It is time for a new constitution, a new Republic, built on the rule of law, and not the rule of a bastard like the deified Roosevelt or St. Hillary! of Little Rock.

Thanks for adding the articles, Rick. See, that wasn't so hard was it?


I'll respond to each after I've had a chance to read them.

[quote="rickheel"] At one time I took the time to find things when the person I was discussing things with was civil. Most of the times thes threads turn into pissing matches.
Here is an example of admitted bias from the head of NPR. There are some fine examples of leanings in this article.

NPR admits a liberal bias
Brent Bozell (archive)


October 22, 2003 | Print | Send


National Public Radio is properly understood, even by the media, as radio by and for liberals, not the general public. As Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz puts it, the media landscape stretches "from those who cheer Fox to those who swear by NPR."

The only ones who seem not to know that the left has a massive, taxpayer-funded radio network of 700 affiliates are the liberals trying to sell investors on their own private-sector talk-radio network. A recent PBS "NewsHour" story on talk radio turned ridiculous when reporter Terence Smith allowed liberal-network booster Jon Sinton to proclaim: "Every day in America on the 45 top-rated talk radio stations, there are 310 hours of conservative talk. There is a total of five hours of talk that comes from the other side of the aisle."

Don't buy that for a minute. The key word in that sentence is "top-rated" stations. Sinton's upset that conservatives apparently dominate "top-rated" talk. That doesn't mean NPR doesn't have hundreds of hours of liberal talk shows, not to mention liberal "news" shows. It's just not "top-rated."

Last week, NPR's own official ombudsman, Jeffrey Dvorkin, admitted a liberal bias in NPR's talk programming. The daily program "Fresh Air with Terry Gross" -- a 60-minute talk show about the arts, literature and also politics -- airs on 378 public-radio stations across the fruited plain. Gross recently became a hot topic on journalism Web sites for first having a friendly, giggly interview with "satirist" Al Franken, promoting his obnoxious screed against conservatives on Sept. 3, and then on Oct. 8, unloading an accusatory, hostile interview on Bill O'Reilly's show. She pressed the Fox host to respond to the obnoxious attacks of Franken and other critics. Dvorkin ruled: "Unfortunately, the (O'Reilly) interview only served to confirm the belief, held by some, in NPR's liberal media bias ... by coming across as a pro-Franken partisan rather than a neutral and curious journalist, Gross did almost nothing that might have allowed the interview to develop."

The news reports on NPR should be cause for greater public concern. Under the guise of "objective news" reporting, the left is actively advancing its political agenda. On the Oct. 17 "Morning Edition," host Bob Edwards launched into a long "news" report on the flaws of the Bush foreign policy, observing: "Overall, the policies of the United States are still very unpopular around the world. The Bush Doctrine, a preference for unilateral military action and a disdain for multinational diplomacy, is under scrutiny more than ever." The Middle East "road map" was "in tatters," Iraq and Afghanistan were "highly unstable." NPR may as well have suggested it was time for a different president.

Reporter Mike Shuster was intent on driving home the theme that the Bush foreign policy may (read: we hope) one day be analyzed as an utter failure. His three primary, supposedly nonpartisan "experts" were Ivo Daalder, a member of Clinton's National Security Council; Michael Mandelbaum, a foreign policy adviser to the 1992 Clinton campaign; and John Mearshimer, a regular critic of Bush foreign policy who argued in Foreign Policy magazine that Iraq should have remained under "vigilant containment," which we could also describe as maintaining a murderous tyrant in power. Their controversial views and Clinton connections were not developed by NPR.

Perhaps the biggest public-relations problems for NPR come when its liberal reporters hit the weekend talk-show circuit and let their opinions fly wildly. On Oct. 18, NPR legal reporter Nina Totenberg pronounced from her regular panelist perch on the TV show "Inside Washington" that General Jerry Boykin, who sermonized in Christian churches with the shocking, less-than-Unitarian message that Christianity is true and other creeds are false, should be fired.

Well, that's not the way it came out. First, Totenberg said Boykin's remarks were "seriously bad stuff," and then she said, "I hope he's not long for this world." Host Gordon Peterson joked, "What is this, The Sopranos?" Withdrawing to damage-control mode, Totenberg said she didn't mean she hoped he would die, just that he shouldn't last long "in his job."

But it's Totenberg who ought to fear for her job with these outbreaks of hate speech. Totenberg used this very same TV show to wish in 1995 that if the "Good Lord" knew justice, Senator Jesse Helms will "get AIDS from a transfusion, or one of his grandchildren will get it."

It's awfully ironic that a woman who has spent 30 years saying outrageous liberal things on the taxpayer dime is now attacking a general on the grounds that there ought to be some things government officials cannot say and keep their jobs. The concern over these Boykin remarks should not be about the separation of church and state. It ought to be about the separation of National Public Radio from the state.


Brent Bozell is President of Media Research Center, a TownHall.com member group.