Again, all of this is not so unusual. The relentless, constant bias on all things great and small is present each and every week. You could write a book on it (and many have). At what point, he asked, do the media admit the truth? I’m not holding my breath.

As long as we are discussing Sarah Palin, do you recall how when Congresswoman Gifford was tragically shot that somehow a piece of direct mail sent by Sarah Palin had so poisoned political discourse that Tea Partiers were incited to shoot people. Never mind that the accused assailant was demonstrably not a part of any conservative movement. Conservatives had so disturbed the discussion, civility was lost and violence was in the air. I guess comments by Democrats just have some sort of magic that prevents them from affecting anyone. After all, if it were any different, I am sure the Washington Post would have given way more attention (and plenty of editorial condemnation) to the comments of David Axelrod where he described Republican Super PACs as being “contract killers.” Golly, is that a little over the top? Guess not.

More tomorrow . . .

Yet, you pick up a newspaper in any given week and there is abundance of material that just screams: Go ahead and be liberal and be bias in that direction. Just stop telling me you are not liberal or biased.

How about this week? (As the headline says, I could do this all day long). Well, during the winter, I read how disingenuous Marco Rubio was when his autobiography described his parents coming to Florida to flee from Castro. The fact is they left slightly before Castro was in power, anticipating the future and never returned due to Castro being in power. These facts resulted in a barrage of media attention with all sorts of analysis along the lines of “Rubio chances in Veep sweepstakes damaged” and plenty of chatter that he had embellished in a horrible way to gain a benefit. Now, we have Saint Elizabeth, or Elizabeth Warren, the Democrat running to defeat the supposedly only sort of Republican that should be tolerated (Scott Brown). For a very long time, and with every evidence that it was done for gain, Ms. Warren claimed Native American heritage on the basis of being 1/32 Native American. Her claim it had nothing to do with trying to get anything, her description of this being a way for her “to meet others like myself,” her playing the gender card (strong woman the target of attacks, etc.) all are supposed to be taken quite seriously and the only fair thing to do is drop the story, PDQ.

To be continued . . .

Did you read about the wife of the conservative Republican governor who spoke before a traditional marriage group and said that only “cowards” had prevented the state legislature from passing a law to guarantee the preservation of traditional marriage?  Surely, you saw the editorial denouncing her for interfering in such a sensitive subject.  You remember how outraged they were that the wife, also a sitting judge, had demonstrated her inability to set aside her personal point of view which rendered unsuited to serve in a position that required an ability to impose “blind justice.”

You don’t remember any of this?  No wonder.  It never actually happened.  You know what did happen?  The wife of the liberal governor of Maryland, Catherine O’Malley spoke before what the Washington Post called “a national conference of gay-rights advocates.”  What did Mrs. O’Malley have to say?  In addressing the failure of the Maryland legislature to pass a law allowing for gay marriage, she “blamed the demise in the General Assembly on ‘some cowards that prevented it from passing.”  With the predictable outrage in response to her statement, Mrs. O’Malley has subsequently issued the predictable apology.

The article observes that “as a sitting judge, Catherine O’Malley is prohibited by a judicial code of conduct from engaging in partisan political activity.”  It goes on to note that “aides say that Catherine is passionate about legalizing same sex marriage.”

How about refraining from engaging in “partisan activities?”  Well, according to the article, “last year, the first lady met privately with several wavering lawmakers, urging them to support the bill.”  That sounds a little like lobbying.  Not to worry though.  “She said at the time that her advocacy was ‘just as a citizen.”

So, what’s my problem with all of this?  Just that the article appears in the Metro Section.  There is no editorial condemning her involvement, much less one calling for her to resign as a judge.

Forget for a moment what your position on gay marriage is.  That is not the point here.  The point here is that if it had been a wife of a conservative governor, speaking before a traditional marriage group, calling opponents of what she wanted “cowards,” the Washington Post would have put the story—and not for a single day—on the front page of the news section.  Had that wife also been a judge and had that wife engaged in lobbying for legislation, the Post would have editorialized for her to resign.

As it stands now, the Washington Post can break its arm patting itself on the back congratulating itself that it “reported” the story.  Yes, indeed they did.  However, can anyone whose I.Q. exceeds single digits pretend they did it in the same way they would have, if the offensive remarks had come from a conservative?

It is this shaping of what counts and what is important—always with a liberal slant—that offends.  It is the idea that there are always two sets of rules.  Under the first set, crossing the street the wrong way by a conservative is “visible disdain for following the law.”  Under the second, armed robbery is a “principled attempt to feed one’s hungry family.”  It is wrong is what it is.

While the answer from most would be no, the process did shine the first light on just what Barack Obama and the Democrats plan for our nation. The light becomes even more intense as Democrats now demand extension of the payroll tax cut, only to pair that extension with a demand to raise taxes on the job producing sector of our economy.

All the countdown clocks, class warfare rhetoric and empty proposals do not change the fact that the Democrats do not want any kind of a deal at all.

What the White House and Congressional Democrats really want is the clock to run out on the payroll tax cuts they claim to protect in 2012, as well as the Bush tax cuts in 2013. That is why every one of their proposals for extensions will have some kind of “soak the rich” provision.

That way they will have their cake and eat it too. They will blame the Republicans for allowing taxes to going up on working Americans to protect the rich, while leading the charge to spend every last cent of additional revenue caused by these expiring tax cuts. Their new taxes also prolong the fundamental changes our country has to make to assure our nation’s fiscal integrity.

Obama and his allies are willing to gamble our fragile economic recovery away and long-term budget stability for the short-term game of satisfying their special interests with more spending. And, they’re counting on riding that wave through another election.

When it was Joe Paterno at Penn State, the standard seemed to be one where notifying his superiors of the potential of wrongdoing and letting the system handle the challenge without going to the authorities (police) with everything brought to his attention meant Joe Paterno failed miserably and deserved to be immediately fired. No benefit of the doubt for Joe Paterno based on his years and years of demonstrably doing the right thing. No thought that if Paterno did want to “bury the problem,” going to his supervisors is hardly what springs to mind as the action to be taken. No, anything other than Joe Paterno not going directly to the police constitutes miserable failure of responsibility on his part. He, and virtually anyone associated with the athletic program and administration of the university had to be immediately terminated. We have folks such as Christine Brennan arguing that Penn State ought not to participate in a post-season bowl game. Just what logic is there, I ask, for punishing the current football players who had nothing to do with anything related to the scandal? The triumph of political correctness and moral indignation requires the totally innocent to pay a price. Why?

Now, go to the scandal at Syracuse. From all I can gather, ESPN was given the infamous tape of the conversation between the wife of assistant coach Bernie Fine and the alleged victim years and years ago. They say that, at the time, they could not corroborate anything, so they did nothing. They did not run the story. They did not go to authorities of the university. Most important, they did not go to legal authorities. If Joe Paterno doing anything other than going to the police on the basis of what he was told is dereliction of duty, just what is it when you have a tape with indications of abuse and you do not go to the legal authorities? Where are all the calls for heads to roll at ESPN? Who is paying the price for inaction that perhaps meant that additional child abuse took place? How is it that the network with all the chattering talking heads who roundly condemned Joe Paterno and everything at Penn State can pretend they did nothing wrong in the Syracuse situation? Simple. As is the case in almost all things mainstream media, these people have one standard for all of us and a completely different one for themselves. They ought to be ashamed, but we know they are not.

For weeks and weeks, we were told that any Republican who refused to vote for whatever package came forward, no matter what it did or did not include, was an individual who would put the economic well being of the nation at peril. A resistant Republican was willing to “risk default to simply attempt to make a political point” was something we all read or heard more than once. That Republican was also subject to being accused of harboring not only rigid (“out of the mainstream”) ideological views but also likely dedicated to the fall of the Obama presidency (a sentiment sometimes attributed to a motivation with a racial component).

So, what happened when real rubber hit real road, when there was an actual piece of legislation to raise the debt ceiling—a measure endorsed by President Obama? In the House of Representatives approximately two of every three Republicans voted in favor of the legislation. And the Democrats? The Democrats in the House split exactly down the middle—75 for it and 75 against it. Funny thing. I recall not a single column from the E.J. Dionne’s of the world offering a word of criticism regarding the Democrats who in reality “turned their back on the President of the United States and said default was preferable to what the leadership of both parties endorsed….”

How is it barely possible, under any sort of intellectual honesty, to pretend that a Republican who would not promise to vote for a non-existent piece of legislation to raise the debt ceiling is guilty of all those terrible things the liberals in the mainstream argued at the time, but a Democrat who actually did vote against the legislation to raise the debt ceiling (legislation endorsed by the President and the mainstream media’s favorite entity—bipartisan leadership in the Congress) did nothing wrong?

Ah, I know. Consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds. Yet, there is one consistent aspect to all of this. Conservatives and Republicans are always wrong and liberals and Democrats are always right. Quite a high standard for analysis, don’t you think?

From where I sit, this more closely matches an attitude consistent with a particular political agenda than anything resembling a consistent intellectual approach to our history. Under the liberal worldview, most of the problems America has with the rest of the world can generally be attributed to America doing the wrong things—often as a result of insufficient appreciation of the culture and points of view of non-Americans. Who can ever forget the Jean Kirkpatrick speech at the 1984 Republican Convention when she highlighted how liberals blame America for difficulties “because they always do?” In polite society, only a handful of people ever ventured to argue that America bore any blame for the thousands of innocent lives lost as a result of an unprovoked attack by an organized group of terrorists. This, obviously, conflicts with the basic attitude of liberals on such matters, so the sooner forgotten, the better.

Contrast this approach with the one taken by liberals on matters of civil rights and the history of African Americans. Nobody, save for those who truly are racists, can argue that our history is not one that includes evils such as slavery, Jim Crow laws, and a persistent inability to completely eradicate negative behavior towards minorities that is the result of racial attitudes. I certainly do not. Moreover, I concur that reminders of what has happened throughout our history are a good thing. I feel this way given that: most of the major civil rights laws were passed in the 1960’s; we have spent (literally) trillions in an attempt to eliminate poverty and racism; we have a Martin Luther King national holiday and a national monument to him; and, we have an entire month (February) dedicated to black history. Anyone who would advance the sentiment that perhaps we are near overkill on paying attention to our history on race would (rightly) be accused by liberals of wanting to “brush aside the past.” Anyone arguing that possibly some so sensitive to the need to highlight the history of race in America on a constant basis do so with an eye towards best assuring the public policies they feel are needed in this day and age are put into place would be tarnished as being insensitive and possibly racist.

So, I ask the liberals who are in such a rush to “put 9-11 behind us” just what logic and intellectual consistency binds together that thought with their correct insight that paying attention to our history on race is needed to this very day? My answer is there is none and all would be best served if we faithfully and honorably paid attention to ALL of our history, and this certainly includes remembering the events of 9-11 a scant ten years after the event itself.