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Today’s L.A. Times: For years, Frank Miller spoke of a Gotham City graphic novel that would be like no other — for the 120 bone-crunching pages of “Holy Terror, Batman!”...

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Today, on MSNBC’s Hardball, Chris Matthews acknowledged (and appears to be the first member of the mainstream media to acknowledge) that the video Andrew Breitbart posted in his July 19th Big Government article about an NAACP audience’s reaction to a particular moment in Shirley Sherrod’s speech, does in fact include Ms. Sherrod discussing her redemptive revelation (transcript from Newsbusters):

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Well, there you go. [Quoting Ms. Sherrod] “I opened my eyes. I realized it wasn’t about black and white. It was, but it was about other things, about poverty.” So … that part, that part in there about redemptive revelation was actually in the initial tape.

This then prompts Mr. Matthews to ask his guests, Governor Howard Dean and Joan Walsh, a question that answers itself:

Yeah, but why do you think if this was a complete slime job, why do you think Breitbart kept that in there, Governor? Why did he keep in that part – let me let the Governor in here. Why did he put the redemptive part in here at all?

Dean admits he has never even viewed that 2:36 video in its entirety! Nor has he even read Andrew Breitbart’s original article, which states:

Eventually, her basic humanity informs that this white man is poor and needs help. But she decides that he should get help from “one of his own kind”. She refers him to a white lawyer.

Of course that has not stopped Dean from appearing on multiple networks and ripping Fox News as being racist for having played the video of Shirley Sherrod released on BigGovernment.com (yes, the same 2:36 video he has not watched all — any? — of).

It’s reasonable to assume Dean isn’t the only member of the media or punditry guilty of this negligence. While the Democrat Media Complex rushes to condemn Breitbart for not offering adequate context in his multimedia presentation, how many actually stopped to read and watch the context that was given in the first place. (Hint: The over/under is Chris Matthews.)

Will the rest of the MSM follow Matthews’ lead, take a breather from their feeding frenzy, and follow suit? Or will they continue to mischaracterize and misinform?

Today, on MSNBC’s Hardball, Chris Matthews acknowledged (and appears to be the first member of the mainstream media to acknowledge) that the video Andrew Breitbart posted in his July 19th Big Government article about an NAACP audience’s reaction to a particular moment in Shirley Sherrod’s speech, does in fact include Ms. Sherrod discussing her redemptive revelation (transcript from Newsbusters):

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Well, there you go. [Quoting Ms. Sherrod] “I opened my eyes. I realized it wasn’t about black and white. It was, but it was about other things, about poverty.” So … that part, that part in there about redemptive revelation was actually in the initial tape.

This then prompts Mr. Matthews to ask his guests, Governor Howard Dean and Joan Walsh, a question that answers itself:

Yeah, but why do you think if this was a complete slime job, why do you think Breitbart kept that in there, Governor? Why did he keep in that part – let me let the Governor in here. Why did he put the redemptive part in here at all?

Dean admits he has never even viewed that 2:36 video in its entirety! Nor has he even read Andrew Breitbart’s original article, which states:

Eventually, her basic humanity informs that this white man is poor and needs help. But she decides that he should get help from “one of his own kind”. She refers him to a white lawyer.

Of course that has not stopped Dean from appearing on multiple networks and ripping Fox News as being racist for having played the video of Shirley Sherrod released on BigGovernment.com (yes, the same 2:36 video he has not watched all — any? — of).

It’s reasonable to assume Dean isn’t the only member of the media or punditry guilty of this negligence. While the Democrat Media Complex rushes to condemn Breitbart for not offering adequate context in his multimedia presentation, how many actually stopped to read and watch the context that was given in the first place. (Hint: The over/under is Chris Matthews.)

Will the rest of the MSM follow Matthews’ lead, take a breather from their feeding frenzy, and follow suit? Or will they continue to mischaracterize and misinform?

Like a game of three card monte, the FDA, the mainstream media and liberal bloggers have joined together to deny life extending options for victims of breast cancer – sacrificing life on the rationing altar of budgetary constraints. Once you understand how the game is played, you will see that patients will always lose.

Three card monte is a street card game where a dealer uses two shills to con unsuspecting observers to bet money. In this case the dealer is the FDA and the two shills are the Associated Press and the left-wing blog, TalkingPointsMemo.com.

Understanding the game is the key to understanding how ObamaCare and it’s rationing scheme will work. It’s time to learn the rules.

The FDA is tasked to determine the safety and efficacy of drugs. They are not charged to determine drug pricing; just safety. Avastin was originally labeled for treatment of breast cancer patients in an expedited fashion based on initial studies that showed the drug produced on average nearly 6 months without tumor progression. So the FDA is now looking a follow-up study that shows an average of about 3 months without tumor progression. These are average time frames, meaning that many in the studies got more than 6 months or 3 months in the respective studies. The FDA also looked for new adverse events (side effects) and determined that there are no new safety concerns raised in the trials for breast cancer applications for the drug Avastin.

Despite the determination that the drug was safe and effective, the FDA is trying to de-label the drug for use with late stage breast cancer patients by changing the evaluation rules to use the price of the drug to determine its effectiveness. That is rationing. Period. The FDA created a subjective standard they call “clinically meaningful.” Sounds impressive but what does that mean? In the case of Avastin, which has been shown to actually work, the FDA is just saying that the average extension of life of 6 months just isn’t meaningful enough. That is the new rules of the game. The dealer always wins.

Once the rules have been changed, the shills move in. The Associated Press takes the new subjective language intended to lead people to believe the drug is being de-labled because it doesn’t work and in turns that into actually false information saying that “recent studies finding that the drug did not extend patients’ life spans and also increased the incidence of side effects and other complications.” Patently false.

Then when US Senator Vitter expresses concerns about the decision, the Associated Press blatantly and falsely attacks him and attempts to discredit him. Associated Press, reporting on efforts by Sen. David Vitter to ensure doctors had the option of offering Avastin, proclaimed incorrectly that — and this is a direct quote — “While he did not use the term “death panels,” his complaint mirrors false allegations raised last year by Republicans such as former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who claimed the Democratic health care bill included “death panels” that would decide who deserves treatment and who doesn’t.” Talk about bias and the basis for a smear. That is where shill number two comes in.

The Talking Points Memo takes the death panel claim and runs with it. Declaring Vitter’s objections “VitterCare,” the blog quotes generously from the false, bias and misleading implications of the Associated Press story calling Vitter’s actions a “smear.”

Both shills defending the dealer using subjective standards with hazy labels that get turned into patently false information in a compliant and willing media. That is the way the game will be played and patients lose.

So a new survey reports that one in five Californians need help for a mental or emotional issue. Seems low, if you ask me. I mean – this is California, home to Sean Penn, Mel Gibson and the...

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Explosive if true:

The “appearance of impropriety” is often considered the Washington standard for corruption and misbehavior. With that in mind, alarm bells began ringing in my head when I read this Washington Times report about Jacob Lew, Obama’s nominee to head the Office of Management and Budget.

Why did Citigroup decide to hire a career DC political operator for $1.1 million? As a former political aide, lobbyist, lawyer, and political appointee, what particular talents did he have to justify that salary to manage an investment division? Did the presence of Lew (as well as other Washington insiders such as Robert Rubin) help Citigroup get a big bucket of money from taxpayers as part of the TARP bailout? Did Lew’s big $900K in 2009 have anything to do with the money the bank got from taxpayers?

Is it a bit suspicious that he received his big windfall bonus four days after filing a financial disclosure? Read this blurb from the Washington Times and see if you can draw any conclusion other than this was a typical example of the sleazy relationship of big government and big business.

President Obama’s choice to be the government’s chief budget officer received a bonus of more than $900,000 from Citigroup Inc. last year — after the Wall Street firm for which he worked received a massive taxpayer bailout. The money was paid to Jacob Lew in January 2009, about two weeks before he joined the State Department as deputy secretary of state, according to a newly filed ethics form. The payout came on top of the already hefty $1.1 million Citigroup compensation package for 2008 that he reported last year.

Administration officials and members of Congress last year expressed outrage that executives at other bailed-out firms, such as American International Group Inc., awarded bonuses to top executives. State Department officials at the time steadfastly refused to say if Mr. Lew received a post-bailout bonus from Citigroup in response to inquiries from The Washington Times. But Mr. Lew’s latest financial disclosure report, provided by the State Department on Wednesday, makes clear that he did receive a significant windfall. …The records show that Mr. Lew received the $944,578 payment four days after he filed his 2008 ethics disclosure.

Lest anyone think I’m being partisan, let’s now look at another story featuring Senator Richard Shelby. The Alabama Republican and his former aides have a nice incestuous relationship that means more campaign cash for him, lucrative fees for them, and lots of our tax dollars being diverted to moochers such as the state’s university system. Here are some of the sordid details.

Since 2008, Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby has steered more than $250 million in earmarks to beneficiaries whose lobbyists used to work in his Senate office — including millions for Alabama universities represented by a former top staffer. In a mix of revolving-door and campaign finance politics, the same organizations that have enjoyed Shelby’s earmarks have seen their lobbyists and employees contribute nearly $1 million to Shelby’s campaign and political action committee since 1999, according to federal records. …Shelby’s earmarking doesn’t appear to run afoul of Senate rules or federal ethics laws. But critics said his tactics are part of a Washington culture in which lawmakers direct money back home to narrow interests, which, in turn, hire well-connected lobbyists — often former congressional aides — who enjoy special access on Capitol Hill.

Some people think the answer to these stories is more ethics laws, corruption laws, and campaign-finance laws, but that’s like putting a band-aid on a compound fracture. Besides, it is quite likely that no laws were broken, either by Lew, Citigroup, Shelby, or his former aides. This is just the way Washington works, and the beneficiaries are the insiders who know how to milk the system. The only way to actually reduce both legal and illegal corruption in Washington is to shrink the size of government. The sleaze will not go away until politicians have less ability to steer our money to special interests – whether they are Wall Street Banks or Alabama universities. This video elaborates.

On June 24, 2010, I had a post on BigHollywood that examined Robert Redford’s asinine statements about the Gulf Oil Spill. From his support of a drilling moratorium to the fact that he literally...

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I imagine that the journalism profession has always attracted more than its fair share of people who are left of center.   So in a way,  the Journolist does not come as any great surprise.  But what does stand out about it is the glaring in-your-face nature of the whole thing.

You see, the old school liberals in journalism,  even though they were left-of-center,  wanted to be journalists first and ideologues second.  There was a code of professionalism, admittedly not always followed,  that called on them to put the pursuit of truth first.  (How one defines the truth is always the question.)  Many of them would not even register to vote, or at least not register to vote with a party affiliation,  because of they wanted to somehow conform to this code.

JournoList stands out because of the hubris of this new batch of liberal journalists.  Forget old school;  they are quite content to pass along emails and concoct plans to label people as “racist” who happen to raise questions about Jeremiah Wright.

The old timers were journalists first,  liberals second.  The new crop is clearly made up of those who are liberals first and journalists second.  Indeed,  their journalism is not an end in itself but a means to achieving their liberal ends.   When the New Left began its Long March Through the Institutions in the sixties,  it began with the universities and other centers of power.  It is culminating in the media world.

And what a choice they have made.

Theodore H. White warned in The Making of the President 1972:

The power of the press in America is a primordial one.  It sets the agenda of public discussion; and this sweeping political power is unrestrained by any law.  It determines what people will talk and think about—an authority that in other nations is reserved for tyrants, priests, parties, and mandarins.”

The Making of the President 1972 (New York:  Antheneum, 1973)  p 245

Oscar Wilde offered,  “In America the President reigns for four years and journalism governs forever and ever.”

But there is good news in all of this.  Absent the alternative media on the Internet—these guys would never have been caught.  They would have been able to maintain the charade that they are “working journalists” and quietly continued with their plots and schemes.  They are no doubt continuing to communicate with each other in the same manner that they did on JournoList.

But the veil has been torn from their faces.   And their “analysis” has been revealed for what it is:  political hackery.

Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Julius Genachowski continues his persistent push to dramatically increase his Commission’s regulatory authority over the Internet.

He remains just as persistent in refusing to offer a substantive legal authority for doing it.

This could be because there really isn’t one.  And it’s not just me saying it.  It’s also a unanimous D.C. Circuit Court (in the Comcast-BitTorrent case), 282 members of Congress – including 74 House Democrats, and even seventeen minority groups who almost NEVER line up against any Democrat anywhere.

The consensus being that legislation is required to better delineate FCC authority over the Internet.

Way back on May 27, Michigan Democrat John Dingell sent Genachowski one of his famous “Dingell-grams” requesting an explanation.  On July 26 – nearly two months later – Genachowski finally responded.  Dingell was underwhelmed.

So much so that he yesterday publicly released a letter, in which he clearly expresses his under whelmed-ness.

“Unfortunately, the paucity of substantive responses to my aforementioned questions in your recent letter has served only to substantiate my fear that the Commission’s proposed path with respect to the regulation of broadband is based on unsound reasoning and an incomplete record,…”

Them’s harsh words.  From a Democrat, to a Democrat.

Dingell went on to express his substantial concern for the debilitative effect the Commission’s move to regulate would have on future Internet successes and investment.

“I worry that hurried action by the Commission to complete a rulemaking or issue a declaratory ruling concerning the classification of broadband Internet access services in the absence of a clear statutory mandate from the Congress will result in poor policy and protracted litigation, which itself will confound the Congress’ and the Commission’s efforts to encourage further investment in broadband infrastructure, create new jobs, and stimulate broadband adoption as we seek to implement network neutrality rules.

“With this in mind, I reiterate my suggestion that the Commission abandon the classification effort it has set in motion and instead seek the authority it requires by asking the Congress to enact a statute that clearly delegates such authority.  In this way, the Congress and Commission may ensure the steadfast legal foundation for an open internet.”

Congressman Dingell gets a little sideways with his contradictory desires to “implement network neutrality rules” and “ensure the steadfast legal foundation for an open internet.”  But his letter is a good and thorough whacking of the overreaching course currently charted by the FCC.

Congressman Dingell is just another in a LOOONG line of public officials – from both the legislative and judicial branches – telling the executive branch’s FCC that they do not have the regulatory authority to do what they are currently trying to do – commandeer control of the Internet.

It’s time for Chairman Genachowski to acknowledge this obviousness, and defer to Congress to do what it has always done with the FCC – decide whether or not to pass laws that give the Commission the authority it foolishly wishes to exercise all by it’s lonesome.

There’s a lot of buzz on the Internet about what has been called the JournoList. This was a private e-mail list maintained by Washington Post columnist Ezra Klein of about 400 journalists, bloggers, and academics who may have colluded in aiding the election of Mr. Obama. Mr. Breitbart is the king of the alternative media and created his “Big” sites to report what was being unreported by the mainstream media. Big Journalism and Big Government are two Breitbart sites that have uncovered scoops that took weeks for the mainstream media to report. The Acorn scandal would never have come to light without this exposure. On May 10, Brad Thor posted on Big Government the capture of Taliban leader Mullah Omar in Pakistan, yet to date we haven’t heard a ripple in the mainstream media.

Mr. Breitbart offered a $100,000 reward for anyone who could provide the complete Journolist e-mail sessions and while no one has claimed that reward yet, Tucker Carlson, the editor of the DailyCaller.com, has released copies of some of the e-mail correspondence. These have been reported on the “Big” sites and Fox News. What they reveal is very disturbing to those who still naively believe that the Fourth Estate is incorruptible. Uncovered is an egregious conspiracy to slant the news for an ideological motive rather than journalistic integrity.

The mostly white, liberal, leftist group correspondence suggested ways to cover the 2008 presidential campaign that would benefit Mr. Obama and vilify the McCain/Palin team. Of course, this media bias is not news to anyone on the right, but for the first time there is concrete proof that Mr. Obama was the choice of the mainstream media, which aided and abetted his campaign.

It was the same in 1992, when the media was enthralled with Bill Clinton. I well remember watching a satellite feed that picked up CNN’s Larry King giving pointers to the young governor of Arkansas on what to say during his interview. As his poll numbers started to climb, Pres. George H.W. Bush appeared on Mr. King’s show the Friday before the election. That day there was an indictment of Caspar Weinberger in the Iran/Contra case that hadn’t received much notice yet. Mr. King then took calls from the public for the president to answer and, lo and behold, somehow, fantastically, and how conveniently, the caller was George Stephanopoulos, Mr. Clinton’s campaign manager who brought up Iran/contra. Mr. Bush called it a setup but Mr. King just shrugged it off. Since then, it’s been a given that the mainstream media is just an annex of the Democratic National Committee.

Members of the exclusive JournoList were employees of news organizations such as Time, Politico, the Baltimore Sun, the Huffington Post, the Guardian, Salon and The New Republic. Whenever it appeared that there would be negative press about Mr. Obama, the e-mails from contributors would chime in on how to handle it. During the campaign, videos of Mr. Obama’s pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, surfaced showing him angrily denouncing whites, the government and saying, “God damn America.”

Oprah Winfrey had the good sense to leave his church but apparently Mr. Obama sat through his vitriolic racist sermons for 20 years. These videos threatened to blow up the Obama campaign.

JournoLister Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent urged his colleagues to distract the public from the Rev. Wright scandal by accusing conservatives such as Fred Barnes and Karl Rove of being “racists.” This technique is still being utilized to this day.

Chris Hayes of the left-wing publication The Nation was a little more restrained in writing, “I’m not saying we should all rush en masse to defend Wright. If you don’t think he’s worthy of defense, don’t defend him! What I’m saying is that there is no earthly reason to use our various platforms to discuss what about Wright we find objectionable.”

The Journolist e-mail comments were especially vitriolic against V.P. candidate Sarah Palin and were later reflected in the published columns and articles by the members of the group. If you ever wondered why this woman was so viciously attacked, you can blame the influence of this rat pack of pseudo-journalists.

The Dailycaller.com is leaking the e-mails as they come in and I urge everyone to take a peek at this site to view the machinations of the intellectual elite who think we’re too stupid to think for ourselves.

The site recently released the names and photographs of the JournoList participants and it was dismaying to me to see one of my former colleagues among them. I knew the young man was not as conservative as I was but I thought he was a good reporter. He left the paper for a better paying opportunity and perhaps abandoned his scruples as well. He garnered a lot of attention and made his name after reporting an off-the-cuff remark made by a senatorial candidate during a flight that made the front pages. Like the Rolling Stone article that sank General McChrystal, the headlines unfairly sank the senate candidate as well.

I lost a lot of respect for that young man and I am not surprised that he felt comfortable being among other back-stabbers.

Unfortunately, no matter how many smoking guns expose the corruption in the Fourth Estate, there are still too many people who hear only one side of the news. Even though the mainstream media numbers keep declining they still control the major outlets. It’s no surprise that the administration will continue to turn every incident into a race issue. That’s because it works.

Reprinted courtesy of the Irish Examiner

Wednesday’s federal court decision on Arizona’s immigration law is being rightly criticized for a number of reasons. But there are three silver linings to this situation, which may result in the rule of law prevailing in the end.

On July 28, Judge Susan Bolton of the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona issued a preliminary injunction—meaning she stopped from going into effect—most of the key provisions in Arizona’s new law. As I’ve written previously, this law should be held constitutional because it’s not an immigration law; it doesn’t determine who can become a citizen or who can be on American soil. Instead it’s a police-power law, where Arizona says that if you’re not permitted to be in this country, then you’re trespassing if you enter Arizona, and if you have a run-in with the cops for some other reason, then those cops can ask if you’re in this country illegally.

This is not an immigration law. It’s also not racist. It’s not racial profiling. And it’s not usurping the role of the federal government (which has abysmally failed here).

Instead, it’s an employment law and property law. That authority arises from Arizona’s police power to make laws for public safety, health, and societal welfare—which the Constitution reserves to the states through the Tenth Amendment.

But as bad as the federal court’s decision is, there are three silver linings to it that could see the rule of law prevail in the end, to the benefit of everyone—including foreigners who want to work here.

First, with Elena Kagan’s nomination to the Supreme Court looming, this highlights the need for judges who faithfully interpret the Constitution and federal laws according to their original meaning, without any regard for politics or policy preferences. This Arizona case will go to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Goodwin Liu, who believes in constitutional rights to healthcare and housing, and who says any judicial nominee who believes judges are bound by the words of the Constitution should be filibustered because they’re unfit for the bench—is President Obama’s nominee for the Ninth Circuit. This case highlights Liu’s radicalism, and draws the public’s attention to the extremists that the president seeks to put on the courts to rubber-stamp his agenda.

That this law has been put on hold by a federal judge is unfortunate. While Congress has overriding power to make immigration laws, states retain police power under the Tenth Amendment to make laws like Arizona’s. This case will focus America’s judicial debate on faithfulness to the Constitution and the limits of federal power, with implications for everything from Obamacare, to free speech, to gun rights.

Second, this spotlights the need for enforcement in immigration policy. America desperately needs an effective immigration policy that will fulfill our labor needs while upholding the rule of law. (Labor needs that can be met without granting citizenship.) But as Senator Jon Kyl explained, President Obama is holding border enforcement hostage to force amnesty. That’s no way to make policy, and this case focuses the frustration of the American people to secure the border first, and then we can all have a calm and thoughtful debate on how to deal with the broad questions of labor needs, citizenship, and the millions of illegals currently here.

And third, there’s a good chance that this decision will be reversed on appeal. Although the Ninth Circuit is the most liberal federal appellate court in the country (more so if Liu is confirmed), there are a number of originalist judges on that court, so depending on the judges Arizona draws for its three-judge panel, things could go well. Either way the U.S. Supreme Court likely will take this case after the Ninth Circuit reviews it, where the odds are good that Arizona’s law will be upheld.

So Wednesday was a bad day for the rule of law, but those cheering this decision may not be celebrating in the end. It reminds millions of Americans about what we expect from our government—and our courts.

From CBS News:

New York Congressman Charles Rangel has reportedly cut a deal to admit to ethical wrongdoing and avoid a potentially humiliating public trial.

Harlem friends of Rangel tell CBS 2 they have been told that the details could be unveiled when the House Ethics Committee meets Thursday afternoon.

“Sixty years ago I survived a Chinese attack in North Korea and as a result I wrote a book saying that I hadn’t had a bad day since,” Rangel said. “Today I have to reassess that statement.” In a sense, Thursday is Charlie Rangel’s war. He is battling to preserve his legacy of 40 years of congressional service in the face of ethics charges that, at the very least, will subject him to a humiliating process of having to admit ethical wrong doing.

Just what he will admit to and how he will do it remains to be seen. The punishment remains to be seen as well, but sources tell CBS 2 that at the end of the day, Rangel is not expected to be thrown out of Congress and that he is expected to run for reelection to a 21st term.

Earlier in the week, he told CBS 2’s Marcia Kramer that he feels his constituents will forgive him for anything that happens in the midst of the scandal.

“I’m confident that I’m going to win reelection,” he said.

Continue reading here.

Two stories have recently appeared reporting NBC Political Director Chuck Todd’s reaction to the revelations of the JournoList, that website were avowed left-wing journalists congregated to talk about their profession and plot to foster a left-wing agenda in their work in the media.

Todd was reported to have found the JournoList revelations to be “very depressing” and said that the story had “kept him up nights” because of the overt leftist bias evinced by the list member’s emails released by Tucker Carlson’s Daily Caller website.

Journolist was pretty offensive. Those of us who are mainstream journalists got mixed in with journalists with an agenda. Those folks who thought they were improving journalism are destroying the credibility of journalism.

Chuck Todd, non-JournoList member

But later that day another story claiming that Todd was taken out of context emerged that told a slightly different tale. In the afternoon JouronLista Greg Sargent wrote in the Washington Post that Todd was more upset that conservatives that were using the JournoList controversy to push their agenda and was much less upset that the story revealed a left-wing media conspiracy.

So, once again, it appears that the Old Media’s leftist guard is spinning to try and make these revelations all the fault of the conservatives that merely made the list public knowledge. Like the kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar and blaming his brother for telling him to get some cookies, JournoListas are doing everything they can to shift blame.

So, maybe Todd was misquoted by Politico in the earlier report and maybe he was more outraged by the right’s treatment of this story than he was over his agenda-spinning comrades of the JournoList. But is the Post’s Sargent right when he praised Chuck Todd’s latest position on the JournoList? “But it appears Todd has the balance right here…,” Sargent said of Todd’s second public reaction. Can we trust Chuck Todd’s assessment? Is this whole thing really a mess blown out of proportion by conservatives?

Now, in the two Todd JournoList stories he is portrayed as one of those unbiased, middle-of-the-road professional types, the kind we can trust. As noted above, Todd is allegedly outraged that journalists like him were “mixed in with journalists with an agenda.” He clearly wants to foster the image that he is unbiased.

But recently I did a top ten list of the most left-biased journalists working in America today and our friend Chuck Todd came in at number four on that list. (See the full list HERE)

First of all Todd was not always a journalist. He began his professional career by working for Democrat election campaigns, the last of which was Iowa Democrat Senator Tom Harkin’s 1992 failed run for the White House. Todd then went into journalism from there. So we know that he comes to journalism from a left-wing background in the first place. In my story from last week I have instance after instance of Chuck Todd’s own left-wing biased reporting.

I have to admit, when I first heard about the Oliver Stone interview where he accused the Jewish Lobby of controlling the Media and US foreign policy, an uneasy chill ran down my spine.  In...

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As the August 6th bailout deadline approaches, when the federal government must either give ShoreBank $75 million or take it over entirely, new evidence is emerging about ShoreBank’s connections to Chicago politicians.

The latest revelations raise new questions about the possible role of Illinois State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias, who is also the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in the upcoming November election.

Alexi Giannoulias (D) - Source: Crain's Chicago Business

Shortly after Giannoulias took office in 2007, the Illinois Student Assistance Commission (ISAC), a state-run college fund, invested $12.7 million in ShoreBank. Some of ISAC’s funds came from parents who invested in Bright Start, a program to help them save for their children’s college tuition.

As of this week, according to Crain’s Chicago Business, ISAC’s ShoreBank stake has lost over 80% of its value–which not even a bailout will restore.

The $12.7 million investment was ISAC’s “first and only direct investment in a privately held company,” according to Daniels. Furthermore, ISAC’s investment made the tuition program the single largest shareholder in ShoreBank.

That same year, 2007, marked the beginning of ShoreBank’s financial decline, which we now know resulted from investments far outside the bank’s “traditional” market in poor communities on Chicago’s South Side.

As state treasurer, Giannoulias was responsible for ISAC, even though the decision to invest in ShoreBank was taken by ISAC’s executive director. His role in Bright Start, in particular, has been questioned before. On Giannoulias’s watch, Bright Start lost $150 million in a fund that invested in sub-prime mortgages. Giannoulias also bought an SUV for his office using $26,000 of Bright Start’s management fees.

Giannoulias has spun his record as a success. But there is no way to spin ISAC’s ShoreBank investment. No reasonable investor–not even one working for the government–would choose to buy the largest stake in a business specializing in risky loans as their first investment in a privately held company.

The only reasonable conclusion is that ISAC invested in ShoreBank for political, not financial, reasons.

The timing is especially suspicious. ISAC only invested in ShoreBank in 2007, after Giannoulias arrived in Springfield, and at a time when Giannoulias was actively involved in management changes at Bright Start.

Giannoulias should be asked about why ISAC chose to invest in ShoreBank, and about his role in the decision. He should also be asked whether the state participated in ShoreBank’s management decisions through ISAC.

There is much more to the ShoreBank story. Its patrons are running out of excuses, and running out of time.

From the Associated Press:

Ousted Agriculture Department employee Shirley Sherrod said Thursday she will sue a conservative blogger who posted an edited video of her making racially tinged remarks last week.

Sherrod made the announcement in San Diego at the National Association of Black Journalists annual convention.

The edited video posted by Andrew Breitbart led Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to ask her to resign, a decision he reconsidered after seeing the entire video of her March speech to a local NAACP group. In the full speech, Sherrod spoke of racial reconciliation and lessons she learned after initially hesitating to help a white farmer save his home.

Vilsack and President Barack Obama later called Sherrod to apologize for her hasty ouster. Vilsack has offered her a new job at the department, which she is still considering.

Obama said Thursday morning on ABC’s daytime talk show “The View” that the incident shows racial tensions still exist in America.

Continue reading here.

Greg Sargent is a Washington Post blogger. He’s also a former member of JournoList and a friend of Ezra Klein. Any or all of that may explain why he’s twice used his platform at the Post to claim that there is a media conspiracy surrounding the Daily Caller’s publication of JournoList archives:

The real media conspiracy here is on the right. It’s a conspiracy to pretend that there’s a story here when there isn’t one.

Yes, you read that right. He’s accusing the right of a media conspiracy. It’s the sort of fabulist, black-is-white inversion of reality we’ve come to expect from Media Matters, not from the Washington Post. So let’s take a look at Sargent’s case for a right-wing media conspiracy and see if it passes the belly laugh test.

In his first stab at this claim, he took issue with the headline for one of the Daily Caller’s pieces:

It has this huge headline: JournoList debates making its coordination with Obama explicit. But way down in the 13th paragraph, the story quotes a post from the very same thread in which J-List founder and Post blogger Ezra Klein explicitly rules out any such coordination…In other words, the headline on this story could have been: “J-List founder ruled out conspiracy.”

If the Daily Caller was part of a right-wing conspiracy, why bother to include the line Sargent just quoted, or the one that came immediately afterwards which also depicts a list member rejecting the idea? Wouldn’t the conspiracy be more successful without any contradictory evidence? What Sargent wants us to blithely ignore is statements like this from Todd Gitlin of Columbia University:

On the question of liberals coordinating, what the hell’s wrong with some critical mass of liberal bloggers & journalists saying the following among themselves: McCain lies about his maverick status. Routinely, cavalierly, cynically. Palin lies about her maverick status. Ditto, ditto, ditto…Again. And again. Vary the details. There are plenty. Somebody on the ‘list posted a strong list of McCain lies earlier today. Hammer it. Philosophize, as Nietzsche said, with a hammer.

It’s not clear whether Gitlin wrote this before or after Klein nixed the idea; either way there’s no denying the idea was being discussed. Therefore there was nothing dishonest about the Caller’s headline.

Todd Gitlin, JournoList member

Sargent sees further evidence of manipulation in the Caller’s choice of story topics based on the list:

The Daily Caller builds stories by cherry-picking from threads about Fox News and Rush Limbaugh — and gets rewarded with pickup on Fox News and Rush Limbaugh. It does a story transforming J-List discussion about Sarah Palin into “coordination,” and Palin — who’s fast becoming a media figure in her own right — responds by giving it a big push herself. And on and on.

So let me get this straight. Someone on the progressive J-list envisions giggling while Rush Limbaugh expires. The Caller publishes this with the full and reasonable expectation that Rush might talk about it on his radio show. And because Rush mentions the source we now have a vicious right-wing feedback loop (cue dramatic orchestra hits!).

Now ask yourself, does Greg Sargent apply this standard to any media outlet on the left? Does he apply it to Media Matters? To The Nation? To Mother Jones? They publish material aimed at a liberal readership. If they succeed and are mentioned (linked or otherwise credited) on a blog or radio show, it raises their profile. They make a living doing this. Does that make The Nation, for instance, a left-wing conspiracy? If the answer is yes, then Sargent’s point is a trivial observation; if no, it demolishes his original claim.

And that’s the sum of Sargent’s first effort. He’s proven no conspiracy or even something close to being one. Unfortunately for him, his second attempt is just as slight. He writes:

[NBC News director Chuck] Todd…clarified that his primary concern is that the right is successfully using this to carry out its larger program of tarring the mainstream press as liberal.

As I’ve just pointed out, Sargent hasn’t come close to demonstrating that the criticism of JournoList is unfair. In fact, he admits near the end of his second story that “a few J-Listers probably did screw up by suggesting coordination…” But even if Sargent had proven his case that the treatment was unfair, recall that this comes the same week that everyone from the NAACP, to MSNBC, to an endless list of left-wing bloggers have repeated in ways both subtle and not that Fox News was responsible for the firing of Shirley Sherrod. Howard Dean went so far as to accuse the network of racism on national television.

Mediaite is one of the few outlets that has fought the tide on this story, and proclaimed the idea that Fox is responsible a media “myth.” Did Sargent get the memo? Apparently not. He wrote a post about Sherrod which criticized the “Breitbart-Fox News axis,” (nice!) but so far hasn’t bothered to point out that Fox had no appreciable role in her firing. Physician heal thyself.

The real difference is that Chuck Todd doesn’t give a rip about the reputation of Fox. And why should he? They’re the competition. Todd’s concern, as Sargent implies, is for the liberals on his own MSNBC network. Because of the right’s JournoList coverage, he worries some people might come to believe that Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann are…wait for it…biased. Talk about shutting the door after the horse has left the barn. I think the word is out, Chuck. Go get some sleep.

That’s the sum total of Sargent’s argument thus far. And again, this is in the Washington Post which, I suspect, is the only reason anyone would take such a weak attempt seriously.

I’m on record that the failings of JournoList aren’t the fault of Ezra Klein, who founded the group. The record so far supports his contention that it was founded with good intentions. Nevertheless, it clearly got away from him at times. Indeed, he repeatedly had to step in to cut off discussions that were spinning into troubling territory, including some talk by professional journalists and professors that was ethically lax, conspiratorial, and just plain immature. That’s a story, even if Greg Sargent doesn’t understand why.

From the Orlando Sentinel:

If U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson were a rock star, his latest PR blitz — a DVD sent to tens of thousands of Central Florida residents — would be called Grayson’s Greatest Hits.

The 90-minute disc features video highlights from his first term in office, including one of him grilling Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and another in which the Orlando Democrat preaches on the need to teach schoolchildren about the U.S. Constitution.

The DVD comes wrapped inside a mailer covered with promotional slogans: “Congressman Alan Grayson, Hard at Work for You,” “He works hard. He pays attention. He gets things done,” and “Video DVD Inside: Watch Congressman Grayson in Action!”

In many ways, it’s the perfect campaign video — with one key difference.

Thanks to perks given to all members of Congress, it’s not Grayson’s campaign but taxpayers who footed the nearly $73,000 bill to produce and mail the DVD to 100,000 homes in Grayson’s district of Lake, Marion, Orange and Osceola counties.

It’s a stunt that drew howls from Republicans, who complained that Grayson was abusing the congressional privilege of franking that allows lawmakers to send taxpayer-paid newsletters and other mail to residents.

“This is an outrageous abuse of taxpayer dollars, and it goes to show that Alan Grayson is completely out of touch with Central Florida,” said state Rep. Kurt Kelly of Ocala, one of seven Republicans looking to unseat Grayson this fall.

“This is just ridiculous behavior. What congressman would do this in the face of a huge budget deficit?” he asked.

Continue reading here. Color us unsurprised.

You have to give mainstream journalists credit. No matter how high the evidence of liberal bias stacks up, they stick to the notion they don’t play favorites.

Rathergate? An aberration. A Washington Post ombudsman admitting journalists favored Sen. Barack Obama during the 2008 presidential election? Nothing but reporters chasing down history in the making.

Press blackouts on the Van Jones controversy? Oops, we missed it.

The New Black Panther case? Not enough reporters to cover it.

Ezra Klein, JournoList founder

Poll after poll after poll revealing journalists vote for Democrats over Republicans by a wide margin? Doesn’t matter, since they don’t bring their political impulses to bear on their work.

Meanwhile, the public’s faith in the media continues to plummet. And the one cable news outlet with enough reporters – and curiosity – to cover subjects like Jones and the New Black Panther Party, Fox News, continues to see its ratings soar.

Just what will it take to make journalists open their eyes to the inequalities within their profession?

Enter the Journolist scandal. Finally, reporters across the country could see how scribes from both liberal and mainstream outlets discussed how to twist the news narrative like a pretzel to help the Democratic party and paint the opposition as racist without a shred of proof.

Not exactly.

The same old “nothing to see here, folks” reportage followed the drip-drip-drip reports by The Daily Caller.

Some MSM outlets simply ignored the scandal. Others rallied to minimize it. Type “journolist” into CNN.com and you’ll get only one link to a video clip on the subject with media critic Howard Kurtz.

The most partisan, incendiary stuff… comes from people in the opinion business, not beat reporters.” Kurtz said before adding Sarah Palin pounced on the leaks for her latest talking point rather than feeling her outrage. Kurtz also used the words of the list’s founder, Ezra Klein, to end his CNN segment and wipe away any fears the public might have regarding the list.

NBC’s Chuck Todd complained about Journolist in a piece written by Politico, making it appear like he was genuinely concerned about bias in his own industry. Far from it. Todd later clarified his comments to a Washington Post blogger, saying the Right’s use of the scandal was more egregious than the scandal itself.

And then there’s faux conservative Kathleen Parker. She used her latest column to defend her new best buddies in the MSM. Better get ready for another Pulitzer in 2011, Kathleen. You’re earning it.

If email lists spelling out the best way to protect a presidential candidate aren’t enough to convince reporters their profession has hit the skids, then not even a “Network” style rant on national television apologizing for years of bias would make them sing a different tune.