In the past couple of weeks, comedian George Lopez has made two noteworthy jokes during the monologue of the George Lopez show on TBS with the premise that conservatives are racist. On Wednesday’s show, as he brought up President Obama’s interview recorded earlier in the day on ABC’s The View, Lopez took a swipe at right-leaning co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck as he cracked that she had "instinctively grabbed her purse and hit the imaginary door locks on her couch" when she saw Obama coming.

And on the Monday, July 12, show, Lopez portrayed the people of Arizona as racist for supporting the state’s new immigration law, as he suggested that Arizona would welcome Mel Gibson-style racism. Lopez: "Let’s see. He don’t like people of color, he don’t like Mexicans, he don’t like minorities, where can he go? Orale, Arizona!"

After acting out Gibson’s part by declaring, "I hate blacks, I don’t like Mexicans," Lopez then pretended to be an Arizona resident welcoming Gibson into the state: "Right this way."

Below are transcripts of relevant portions of the Monday July 12, and the Wednesday, July 28, George Lopez show on TBS:

#From Monday, July 12:

It doesn’t matter if you’re black or white. As a fine musician once said, it doesn’t matter if you’re black or white. Jewish or Latino. Man or woman. It doesn’t matter. Mel Gibson hates you! It doesn’t matter. What?! What?!

After insulting Jews and blacks, last week, Mel Gibson insulted Mexicans. Finally. Finally insulted Mexicans, which is gacho (bad) because, in the office pool, I had "drunken Indians." I had that paper. I traded "Asians" for that, and I still lost. Mel Gibson insulted Mexicans, which is shocking, to finally get around to us because we’re usually number one on the list! Number one! We’re slipping.

Mel Gibson’s got to get a hold of himself. Today, he told a tiger to go back to Africa. He’s under a lot of pressure, Mel. He needs to go somewhere he can relax, get away from it all. Let’s see. He don’t like people of color, he don’t like Mexicans, he don’t like minorities, where can he go? Orale, Arizona!

Relax, play tennis, canoe. "I hate blacks!" "I don’t like Mexicans." "Right this way."

#From Wednesday, July 28:

Today, President Barack Obama taped an appearance on The View, the President on The View. I thought he was against torture. When the President walked out, Elisabeth Hasselbeck instinctively grabbed her purse and hit the imaginary door locks on her couch.

It was the first time a sitting President has appeared on a daytime talk show, the first time. Oprah was at home, like, "Oh hell, oh no, oh no you didn’t. I got you that job! I got you that job!

The event was so special, they exhumed Barbara Walters. I hope it went better than when President George Bush went on Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? Who’s the 43 rd President? "Um, I’m going to have to say Morgan Freeman."

On Monday’s Joy Behar Show on HLN, guest Ann Coulter answered host Joy Behar’s tendency to link the Tea Party to racism as the HLN host brought up former DNC chairman Howard Dean’s recent accusations that the Republican party are "appealing to its racist fringe." Coulter noted the vicious attacks the far left made against President Bush and alluded to the double standard that liberals try to hold the Tea Party to: "It`s silliness comparing Obama to Lenin and Hitler. Okay, it`s overheated, it`s not racist. And let`s go back to the Bush era. He was called not only a Nazi and Hitler all the time, he was called a monkey all the time. I`m not endorsing these signs, I think they`re stupid, but don`t scream racism over every stupid sign or every liberal plant at a Tea Party."

Behar had posed the question: "This Breitbart thing, in a way, is a perfect example of what Howard Dean, former DNC chairman, is talking about because the GOP is appealing to the racist fringe in order to get back in power. Am I wrong or right?"

Before noting Bush’s treatment by liberals, Coulter responded: "The more recent history is, consists of constant false accusations of racism against the Tea Party just like you made. The claim that John Lewis was called the ‘N’ word 15 times at an anti-Obama rally, well, that`s been as proved false as anything could be."

She continued:

And, by the way, John Lewis never said that himself. I looked it up at the time because John Lewis, – I`m sorry he`s a liberal, but he is a genuine American hero. And I was shocked by that. He never said that himself. The black congressman who claimed he was spat on walked it back. There has been a $100,000 reward, and this is as they`re voting on health care. There are thousands of cameras all over Capitol Hill. There`s a $100,000 reward if anyone can produce a videotape of John Lewis being called the "N" word one time, and still that gets repeated on every network, in the New York Times-

Behar later gave Coulter the chance to suggest questions to ask President Obama for his interview on ABC’s The View:

JOY BEHAR: Now, Ann, let`s face it. You`ll never get an interview with Obama, so, through me, you can channel through me. What would you like me to ask him?

ANN COULTER: I got a lot for you. Why he lied about the health care bill not covering abortion, why he lied about the health care bill not covering illegal immigrants. Also totally serious again, I think he would like this question, what exactly on foreign policy does he think McCain would be doing differently and why was he ginning up those MoveOn.org lunatics during the campaign saying he was going to shut down Guantanamo and pull troops out of Iraq when he hasn`t done that.

Below is a transcript of the relevant portion of the Monday, July 26, Joy Behar Show on HLN:

JOY BEHAR: Let`s listen to what DNC chairman Howard Dean said yesterday on Fox News.

HOWARD DEAN, FORMER DNC CHAIRMAN, CLIP #1: I think Fox News did something that was absolutely racist. They took a, they had an obligation to find out what was really in the clip.

DEAN CLIP #2: Look, the Tea Party called out their racist fringe, and I think the Republican party has to stop appealing to its racist fringe.

BEHAR: Well, you know, this Breitbart thing, in a way, is a perfect example of what Howard Dean, former DNC chairman, is talking about because the GOP is appealing to the racist fringe in order to get back in power. Am I wrong or right?

ANN COULTER: You are wrong, and, in fact, I think that is, I mean, you talk about is Breitbart not familiar with this one woman`s history? Well, the whole world is now, but the more recent history is, consists of constant false accusations of racism against the Tea Party just like you made. The claim that John Lewis was called the "N" word 15 times at an anti- Obama rally, well, that`s been as proved false as anything could be.

And, by the way, John Lewis never said that himself. I looked it up at the time because John Lewis, – I`m sorry he`s a liberal, but he is a genuine American hero. And I was shocked by that. He never said that himself. The black congressman who claimed he was spat on walked it back. There has been a $100,000 reward, and this is as they`re voting on health care. There are thousands of cameras all over Capitol Hill. There`s a $100,000 reward if anyone can produce a videotape of John Lewis being called the "N" word one time, and still that gets repeated on every network, in the New York Times-

BEHAR: But you have said in your column that there`s imaginary racism in this country. Were those pictures of the monkey, was that my imagination or did I see that or didn`t I?

COULTER: Well, for one thing, as I`ve told you before on this show and, as we know, because liberals come out and say it, a lot of them are liberal plants. And just, by the way, I don’t know about the-

BEHAR: Oh, boy-

COULTER: Oh, no, that is an absolute fact, and the one just shown on Center for American Progress was-

BEHAR: Donna, come on.

COULTER: -and, as for the monkey one, I mean, it`s either nothingness, it`s silliness comparing Obama to Lenin and Hitler. Okay, it`s overheated, it`s not racist. And let`s go back to the Bush era. He was called not only a Nazi and Hitler all the time, he was called a monkey all the time. I`m not endorsing these signs, I think they`re stupid, but don`t scream racism over every stupid sign or every liberal plant at a Tea Party.

BEHAR: Okay, Donna, go ahead, Donna.

BRAZILE: Let me just say that we are living in a very unique period of American history, and we can use this time to begin to have a real cogent dialogue about things that we agree with and things that we disagree. There`s no reason why conservatives or liberals or whoever, we can sit down and have a conversation about race, about sexism, about things that matter to American people, about jobs and health care, without using the race word or talk about racism. And we just have to be able to repudiate those who seek to inject race into the conversation and it`s not about racism.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BEHAR: I`m back with Ann Coulter and Donna Brazile. President Obama is going to be on the View Thursday, the first time a sitting President has visited a daytime talk show. I think Ronald Reagan might have done one, but he was napping.

COULTER: He liked his naps.

BEHAR: He liked his naps. Now, Ann, let`s face it. You`ll never get an interview with Obama, so, through me, you can channel through me. What would you like me to ask him?

COULTER: I got a lot for you. Why he lied about the health care bill not covering abortion, why he lied about the health care bill not covering illegal immigrants. Also totally serious again, I think he would like this question, what exactly on foreign policy does he think McCain would be doing differently and why was he ginning up those MoveOn.org lunatics during the campaign saying he was going to shut down Guantanamo and pull troops out of Iraq when he hasn`t done that. Also I want to know when he’s going to quit smoking, and how it is, as the most powerful man in the universe, how does it feel to still be living with your mother-in-law?

BEHAR: Why do Republican women talk so fast? Can you explain that to me?

COULTER: Because we`re so used to being cut off.

BEHAR: Donna, let`s just stop there for a second. What do you mean about the health care bill not covering abortion? How is it covering abortion?

COULTER: It`s now being openly admitted that it`s covering abortion.

BEHAR: Is that true, Donna?

BRAZILE: No, it`s not. There`s nothing in the statute that would allow this plan to cover abortions.

BEHAR: Okay, there you have it.

BRAZILE: Using federal money. Using federal money.

BEHAR: Using federal money. It`s all about federal money. No federal funds shall be used.

COULTER: Right, but you go into an account that the state sets up, and everything else is paid for with federal money.

BRAZILE: Even those states. And if you look at some of the recent emails from Planned Parenthood and they`re out there upset that my private money, because I`m self-employed, will not be able to go into a separate fund because many of these states are opting out of that.

BEHAR (ALL START LAUGHING): But do you really want all these liberal babies to be born?

COULTER: Yes, I do. And I would like them adopted into nice born again families.

BRAZILE: You know, Ann, there`s nothing-

BEHAR: That’s scary.

BRAZILE: -wrong with liberal that, liberals are just like conservatives, we want what`s best for America. That`s all we want.

BEHAR: Yes, that`s right. And nice clothes.

COULTER: Only you, Donna, the rest of the liberals, no.

BEHAR: All right, Donna, what should I ask President Obama?

BRAZILE: Well, I want to talk about, Joy, I would ask him about jobs because clearly the American people are concerned about the economy. They`re concerned about their own jobs. They`re concerned about the fate of their communities, so I would really grill him about jobs, the stimulus plan. And, then, of course, I would like to know what are his plans for the future in terms of controlling the deficit? Will he allow the Bush tax cuts to expire because we simply cannot afford them? Then I would go into Mr. President, what have you been reading lately that didn`t come from the CIA? And then I would ask, and what movie have you been able to watch by yourself alone that made you think differently about the work that you`re doing every day? So I would get into those kind of questions.

Missed? Perhaps, but this story of complacency by President Barack Obama’s administration has certainly been under-reported thus far.

On Fox News Channel’s July 28 broadcast of "Studio B," the network’s judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano discovered a potential lapse in responsibility by the Obama White House. For the broadcast of his July 31 Fox Business Network show "FreedomWatch," Napolitano interviewed Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks.org, the so-called "whistleblower site" which released tens of thousands of classified files about the Afghanistan war. During the interview, Napolitano reported Assange revealed he offered the Obama White House the documents, but they were unresponsive. (h/t @CrabbyCon)

"STUDIO B" HOST SHEPARD SMITH: You just interviewed Julian Assange. Now Julian Assange is the man who is the founder of WikiLeaks – released these, or on his site was released the 92,000 pages of documents that lead to all this discussion about our complete failures in Afghanistan and thoughts that we need to get out of Afghanistan. He told you something that I considered to be a blockbuster bit of news.
NAPOLITANO: And that is that WikiLeaks presented the documents – there were over 100,000 pages of them, to the White House.
SMITH: When?
NAPOLITANO: Weeks before they were released. He wouldn’t give me an exact date.

Smith speculated the White House was offered first glance at these documents prior to other media outlets. Napolitano said Assange got no response from the White House during that time.

SMITH: Maybe about the time they gave it to the — to Der Spiegel and the Guardian and The New York Times, possibly?
NAPOLITANO: Correct. Is there anything in here that can’t be released, that you want redacted, that you don’t want release that you questioned the authenticity of? The White House’s response was silence.
SMITH: But we know that he — it’s his contention that the White House got them and knew they got them. It’s not like he —
NAPOLITANO: Yes. That’s what he told me.

Napolitano explained this is already having an impact on the Obama administration’s ability to execute the war Afghanistan from a political basis.

"The White House is trying to downplay this, but the White House should look at the vote of the House of Representatives yesterday in which a hundred Democrats voted against the supplemental appropriation to fund the war in Afghanistan," Napolitano explained. "Those are people in the President’s own party. When did they take that vote? Three days after the WikiLeaks documents came out."

Napolitano compared how the Bush administration handled these situations with specifically The New York Times and was able to prevent some things from being revealed.
"[E]ven in the Bush administration, when The New York Times wanted to reveal things, the Bush administration negotiated with the White House, delayed the release, talked the times out of releasing proper names," Napolitano explained.

But the Obama administration failed to live to up its predecessors’ standards.
"And apparently, the Obama administration made no such effort and couldn’t have cared less, or that’s the impression that Mr. Assange gave," Napolitano said.

The Assange interview will air Saturday, July 31 at 10 a.m. on the Fox Business Network, according to Napolitano.

MSNBC’s Chris Matthews on Wednesday demonstrated how the dissemination of Democrat talking points and marching orders via the JournoList can be far more effectively employed on television.

In a "Hardball" segment about a new Democratic National Committee ad that looks to connect the GOP with the "more extreme elements" of the Tea Party, Matthews chatted with Republican strategist Todd Harris and the George Soros-funded Center for American Progress’s Jennifer Palmieri about whether the strategy will work.

What was most interesting was how Matthews, almost like a JournoLister, seemed to be drawing from a discussion he had with his panelists on last weekend’s syndicated program bearing his name.

Before we get there, here’s the relevant discussion with Harris and Palmieri (videos follow with transcripts and commentary): 

CHRIS MATTHEWS, HOST: Do you think it would be smarter to say that the Tea Party people are somewhat deranged? I mean, these are different ideologically.

TODD HARRIS, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: Yes, just say it.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: People disagree about it. But I don`t think going after the opposing Wall Street reform is credible.

Here`s a question. You got people, like Sharron Angle, who say they want to have Second Amendment remedies, if you don`t like Congress, like pull a gun out and shoot the Congress. You got people, like Bachmann, who want McCarthy — Joe McCarthy tactics.

JENNIFER PALMIERI, CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS: Right.

MATTHEWS: You got a lot of crazy screw balls out. They`re not screw balls necessarily, it`s people.

PALMIERI: No. Right.

MATTHEWS: But their ideas are. Why don`t you — why didn`t your party go after the screw balls and say the Republicans are in bed with these nuts?

PALMIERI: Well, I think that was the point –

MATTHEWS: But this doesn`t do that.

PALMIERI: Apparently you think they could have executed that better.

(CROSSTALK)

PALMIERI: But they — I don`t think you get more unpopular with privatizing Social Security and Medicare. But they have –

MATTHEWS: You can`t defend your screw ball wing, can you?

HARRIS: Look, both parties have ample supplies of screw balls, both sides.

PALMIERI: Not so much on our side these days.

HARRIS: Oh, please. Please. The fact is the only people this cycle talking about repealing the 17th Amendment –

(CROSSTALK)

HARRIS: — is the Democratic National Committee.

MATTHEWS: They want to give right to life to senators.

PALMIERI: Mike Pence is the chairman of the Republican Caucus and he`s part of the Tea Party Caucus. This is where the Republican leadership, Michele Bachmann, is likely to be a committee chair.

MATTHEWS: All the birthers joined — all the birthers are joining. (INAUDIBLE)

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: How can you — that you`re laughing. You`re laughing at the nuts (ph). You got these crazy ladies and men in the attic, and you say, don`t go up in the attic. That`s your solution.

HARRIS: Look, Marco Rubio who probably — who was on the cover of the –

MATTHEWS: Who`s his consultant?

(LAUGHTER)

HARRIS: Right. Exactly. Marco Rubio was on the cover of "The New York Times" magazine with the headline "The First Senator from the Tea Party Movement." I`ve never heard Marco talked about repealing the 17th Amendment. He doesn`t talk about it. Marco doesn`t talk about ending Medicare. He says we need entitlement reform.

PALMIERI: But Sharron Angle does, and Rand Paul does, and you have like House Republican leadership –

MATTHEWS: You want Tea Party support four candidate?

HARRIS: Of course.

MATTHEWS: Well, that`s the point. You got to defend them.

PALMIERI: Yes, that`s the problem.

HARRIS: Look, the average person who shows — "The New York Times" did a huge survey of the Tea Party Movement.

MATTHEWS: Can you get nine votes without defending nuts?

HARRIS: Hold on. Hold on.

MATTHEWS: I mean, I`m asking a philosophical question.

HARRIS: The overwhelming majority — I`m not going to defend, you know, if someone is racist and shows up at a Tea Party rally, I`m not going to defend that. But the overwhelming majority of people who are involved in the Tea Party Movement are upset about spending, they`re upset about the health care takeover, and they`re frustrated because they feel like their government is not listening to them. That`s what is driving people out to these rallies and if the Democrats want to piss a little of those people –

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: — your side here. Does it offend you as a Republican, a sane Republican, that your candidate to defeat Harry Reid, the head of the Democratic Party in the Senate, believes in people using gunplay if they don`t like Congress?

HARRIS: Well, look, I didn`t see what her quote is.

MATTHEWS: She said, use Second Amendment remedies if you don`t like what Congress is doing.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: She`s your candidate to knock off Harry Reid.

Now, here’s what was discussed on last weekend’s "The Chris Matthews Show" concerning how the Democrats can possibly thwart losing one or both chambers of Congress this November:

MATTHEWS: And here’s the professional challenge for the White House. They got a challenge here. They know what we just said. What are they going to do about it?

Mr. HOWARD FINEMAN (Newsweek Senior Washington Correspondent): There’s not, frankly, that much to brag about, so what they’re going to have to do, and what they will do is focus on Republicans both generally and generically and individually. They’re going to say that individual Republicans are literally crazy, whether it’s Sharron Angle…

MATTHEWS: They got a few cases.

Mr. FINEMAN: They have some cases that they can at least argue that. And more-and they’re going to focus on individual ones. There’s the pointillistic approach. But there’s also the general one, which is going to say, `You can’t take us back to the future with tax cuts and no regulation.’

MATTHEWS: OK.

Mr. FINEMAN: And that’s going to be the argument. Whether it’ll sell or not-I think what they’re really trying to do, Chris, is to depress the turnout of the independents that Amy’s talking about. In other words, poison the well with those people who want-independents who want to vote…

MATTHEWS: So smart. How do they do that? How do they do that?

Mr. FINEMAN: Just give them a lot of bad information about the Republicans.

MATTHEWS: In other words, if people were stock, and they go-John, they’re stock.

Mr. JOHN HEILEMANN (New York). Yeah.

MATTHEWS: They go, `I don’t like the way things are so I don’t feel like voting Democrat. I don’t like the Republicans because they weren’t so good last time, but I see them coming at me, I don’t like that. I’m just not going to-I’m going to go get a beer tonight. I’m not going to vote.’

Mr. HEILEMANN: Go have a beer. Go have a beer.

MATTHEWS: Is that making sense as a strategy?

Mr. HEILEMANN: It’s about-it’s about one of the few strategies available to them. And, you know, there’s a wise-there’s a wise political philosophy-there’s a-there’s a-there’s a wise political philosopher somewhere who said something like, you know, that trying to get-you’re getting-when you go to the voting booth, you’re saying yes to something. You’re pulling the lever in favor of saying yes. There aren’t many people in the country right now that want to say yes to the Democratic Party.

MATTHEWS: So…

Mr. HEILEMANN: So if that’s the case, make them want to say no to Dem-to Republicans as much as they want to say no to Democrats.

MATTHEWS: Which means don’t vote.

Mr. HEILEMANN: And if they don’t want to say-if they want to say no to both of them, they say to hell with this, they stay home, and maybe you’ll limit losses that way.

MATTHEWS: That’s called voter suppression.

So, last Friday when TCMS was taped, Matthews asked his guests – which included Newsweek’s Fineman, New York magazine’s Heilemann, and AJC’s Tucker – what the Democrat strategy should be to avoid catastrophe this November.

The conclusion was THEIR Party – let’s not kid ourselves! – has no other choice but to just play defense and attack Republicans whenever possible in order to suppress votes.

As if on cue, the DNC released the following ad late Tuesday: 

Now, five days after his chat with Fineman et al, Matthews basically discussed the same exact strategy on MSNBC while chatting with a member of the ultra-left-wing, George Soros-funded activist group the Center for American Progress.

Kind of JournoListic, wouldn’t you say? 

On Monday’s Joy Behar Show, when the topic of Chelsea Clinton’s upcoming wedding came up during a panel discussion, host Behar found it "ironic" and "over the top" that the Clinton family are spending $2 million on their daughter’s wedding, comparing it to the $100,000 spent by former President Bush on daughter Jenna’s wedding. After comedian Judy Gold noted the $2 million price tag, Behar responded: "I know, and, you know, George Bush spent only $100,000 on Jenna`s wedding."

Gold took a shot at Bush suggesting that he would have spent more if he could have made it taxpayer-funded: "Yeah, well, if he could have found a way for us to pay for Jenna`s wedding, he would have done that, okay, he likes to spend other people`s money."

Behar continued: "I mean, $2 million, doesn`t that sound like a little over the top, $2 million for one day," and soon added, "I mean, you know, it’s ironic."

Below is a transcript of the relevant portion of the Monday, July 26, Joy Behar Show on HLN:

JOY BEHAR: Okay, speaking of weddings, Chelsea Clinton is going to be getting married. And she`s reportedly getting married this Saturday and she`s inviting President Obama, Oprah Winfrey, Barbara Streisand. Did you get your invitation?

JUDY GOLD, COMEDIAN: Well yes, there is 400 people who are very close relationship with Chelsea. Come on.

BEHAR: Barbara Streisand is a friend of Bill Clinton.

GOLD: I heard they`re taking all references to faithfulness out of the vows.

BEHAR: No, no, come on.

GOLD: No, I just made that up.

BEHAR: No one will wear a blue dress. You know that. … Sarah has a spinning class with Chelsea, right?

SARAH BERNARD, HOST OF THE THREAD: She does go to my spinning class.

BEHAR: So what does she, tell us.

BERNARD: She`s a great spinner.

GOLD: Oh, God.

BEHAR: Like her father. He could spin it, too.

BERNARD: I was so impressed with her. She does seem like a really normal person. But you know what`s really funny about this. One of the news items that broke this week is that all the other weddings, these poor girls that have also planned their weddings, now no one’s going to be able to drive to other weddings because the secret service and everybody is going to be basically having the town in lockdown. I kind of feel bad.

BEHAR: Well, that`s what happens, you know.

GOLD: And then he’s spend, it`s $2 million.

BEHAR: I know, and, you know, George Bush spent only $100,000 on Jenna`s wedding.

GOLD: Yeah, well, if he could have found a way for us to pay for Jenna`s wedding, he would have done that, okay, he likes to spend other people`s money.

BEHAR: I mean, $2 million, doesn`t that sound like a little over the top, $2 million for one day.

GOLD: Two million is a lot, but there`s only one kid. They only have one kid.

BEHAR: So what? So do I.

DEE SNIDER, GROWING UP TWISTED: Write them a check, man. We told our kid, forget the big wedding. Here`s a check. …

BEHAR: I mean, you know, it’s ironic. No, no, they want it all, you know, but these are two public servants who are now spending two million on their kid. Okay, thanks, everybody.

Last Thursday, USA Today bizarrely found a silver lining to the recession: more people walking into welfare offices means more Democrat votes in November.

You see, Americans living in poverty are more likely to support Democrats yet less likely to vote. But never fear – ACORN came along to save the day. The liberal group won a major lawsuit in the battleground state of Ohio just in time for 2010 to assure that more welfare recipients register to vote.

Of course, USA Today didn’t actually admit that it was ACORN and didn’t explain the particulars of the lawsuit, but no matter. We have Democrats to save here.

Prepare yourself for hard-hitting journalism at its finest:

The recession that impoverished millions of Americans is producing a side effect: new voters.

Lawsuits by voting rights groups in Missouri and Ohio have led hundreds of thousands of people to file voter registration applications at welfare agencies, as mandated by the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, or the "motor voter" law. Cases pending in Indiana, New Mexico and other states, as well as new Justice Department guidelines, probably will boost those figures.

Isn’t this peachy? Maybe if we get every unregistered voter on welfare they can all sign up.

Since writer Richard Wolf apparently didn’t have time to explain the lawsuit, allow this NBer to do it for him. The National Voter Registration Act imposed a federal mandate that states provide citizens with opportunity to register in any building that offers public assistance. Several states challenged the authority of federal mandates that contradicted local laws. In Ohio, public servants were generally encouraged to offer registration, but officials insisted that state law made it impossible to enforce.

Never mind that registration was never actually off limits to low income voters. Anyone looking to register could have done so with a simple trip to the right office. Yet ACORN believes that tax dollars should be spent making sure welfare providers aggressively offer registration specifically to a voting bloc known for helping Democrats.

To achieve this, ACORN adopted the strategy of victory through perseverance: keep the lawsuit going forever, appeal as much as it takes, and wait for a judge who sees things their way. In November 2009, a three-year battle ended when Ohio gave up and forged a settlement.

As USA Today gleefully noted, these new voters come just in time for endangered Democrats:

An increase could help President Obama and his party. A USA TODAY/Gallup Poll in June showed 55% of Americans with incomes less than $20,000 like Obama’s performance, tied for his best showing among income groups.

Those numbers could influence elections. Nearly 90% of registered voters cast ballots in 2008, according to the Census Bureau. Republican John McCain won Missouri by 4,000 votes in 2008.

Catch that? If only Missouri had an extra 4,000 welfare voters showing up in 2008, Democrats might have won that state. And it just so happens that right now Missouri Democrat Robin Carnahan is slightly trailing Republican Roy Blunt for a Senate seat this November.

Good thing "voter rights groups" are there to make sure that more reliable Democrat votes are on the way.

Wolf did finally get around to mentioning ACORN, at the very end and only as part of a quote from a critic:

Jason Torchinsky, a former Justice Department lawyer in the Bush administration, says liberal groups want welfare offices to replace the work of ACORN, a coalition of anti-poverty groups that disbanded this year after allegations of voter fraud.

"With the demise of ACORN, the left needs somebody to pick up that function," he says.

See the sleight of hand? Wolf didn’t admit that ACORN was behind the lawsuit or that ACORN front groups like Project Vote continue their work uninhibited. One passing quote from a Bush administration official was apparently enough to deem this article fair.

Did Wolf quote anyone who thought such policies were a waste of tax funding, or that states had no business turning welfare offices into voting stations? No. Thanks to ACORN front groups that hounded the state of Ohio for three years, social workers must now be paid to register poor voters that are openly expected to vote Democratic.

And in the mind of a USA Today reporter, this is apparently a great idea.

Tucker Carlson’s website The Daily Caller has unearthed a treasure trove of liberal journalists talking (nastily) to themselves in a private E-mail list about how they should use their media power to remake the world in their image.

The funniest thing about this expose of “JournoList” was witnessing journalists say it was unfair to leak these e-mails when reporters had an “expectation of privacy.” More than 90,000 pages of secret documents on Afghanistan have been leaked and journalists are tripping over each other in a mad stampede to cover the story. Everyone should laugh heartily at leak-devouring journalists getting a fistful of their own bitter pills.

The saddest thing about all this as the confirmation (as if it were necessary) that liberal journalists really aren’t journalists first. They’re political strategists. They pretend to be the Hollywood version of Woodward and Bernstein, the brave sleuths digging out government malfeasance and corruption. But in reality they’re the Woodward and Bernstein who plotted how to get Richard Nixon impeached and ready the way for pacifist and socialist “Watergate babies” like Chris Dodd and Henry Waxman to take seats of power. Ethics are only relevant if they’re a weapon.

Jonathan Strong’s first installment for The Daily Caller proved that with a wallop. Take former New York magazine political writer Michael Tomasky’s plea to “kill ABC” for talking about Rev. Jeremiah Wright: “Listen folks– in my opinion, we all have to do what we can to kill ABC and this idiocy in whatever venues we have. This isn’t about defending Obama. This is about how the [mainstream media] kills any chance of discourse that actually serves the people.”

Liberal journalists in this crowd favor only discourse that “serves the people” – meaning, a “debate” that advances the ball for socialism. Any other uncooperative or unhelpful line of journalism or questioning or discussion or balance or objectivity is “idiocy” that should be “killed.” At its heart, liberal bias isn’t just about slanting the news against conservatives, it’s about slanting the news to discredit and then ignore conservatives until they sit grumpily on the ash heap of history. If that includes censorship, like yanking the journalist credentials of Fox News, some on the JournoList eagerly have encouraged it.

The “mainstream” (ha!) media’s first bucket of water on the Daily Caller’s fire was to claim that the participants on the JournoList weren’t primarily “objective” media types. It was heavily salted with The Nation, Mother Jones, The American Prospect, and obscure magazines like Government Executive. But the rebuttal is obvious. The list’s creator, Ezra Klein, rose from The American Prospect to being the 25-year-old blogging boy wonder of The Washington Post, whose opinions pop up all over the paper. It’s not at all uncommon for “mainstream” journalists to be groomed at liberal opinion rags. Think of JournoList as part of a finishing school for “objective” journalists, and you can see where conservatives never trust the national media elite.

The second liberal self-defense of JournoList was that Klein claimed there was no plan for partisan “message coordination.” But the Daily Caller showed how no one on the list was really paying attention to that alleged plan. After Sarah Palin was picked for the GOP ticket in 2008, Suzanne Nossel of Human Rights Watch insisted “I think it is and can be spun as a profoundly sexist pick. Women should feel umbrage at the idea that their votes can be attracted just by putting a woman, any woman, on the ticket no matter her qualifications or views.”

Jonathan Stein of Mother Jones insisted the entire Left should spread that spin: “That’s excellent! If enough people – people on this list? – write that the pick is sexist, you’ll have the networks debating it for days. And that negates the SINGLE thing Palin brings to the ticket,” he wrote. No message coordination there.

Some of the exposed journalists have defended themselves by saying they never put their vicious messages in the media mainstream. Others suggested they were just as earnestly biased in public as they were in private. Anyone paying attention to the media during the 2008 campaign clearly didn’t need the JournoList ravings to realize the media immediately despised Sarah Palin and hailed Barack Obama as the glowing receptacle of liberal hopes and dreams and fairy tales.

But these leaked messages are serious business. What they prove is that the “mainstream” media today are often just a shameless channel for leftist message coordination, and that anyone who assumes he’s simply getting the “news” from the national media is a very callow and uninformed consumer.

What’s most shocking is the silence. How many in the “mainstream” press are publicly denouncing those members of JournoList for their blatant disregard of journalistic ethics? Listen to the crickets…

Less than two days before Arizona’s immigration enforcement law is scheduled to go into effect, ABC delivered another installment in the national media’s efforts to discredit it and paint the law as doing more harm than good as anchor Diane Sawyer warned that “undocumented immigrants – many working in this country for decades – are fleeing the state, or hiding in fear.”

With the on-screen heading “PREPARING FOR WORST” over video of an abandoned house, reporter Bill Weir intoned: “There is a fear-driven exodus going on in Arizona tonight. More vacant apartments, more empty shops, more kids disappearing from school.”

Weir explained that “Latino activists are urging their community to check their taillights, not travel in big groups and even remove the Catholic rosary beads from their rear view mirrors” while “law student Daniel Rodriguez, undocumented since his mother brought him at age six, tells me of all the parents giving power of attorney to neighbors in case they’re deported without their American-born children.”

Finding more victims, Weir highlighted a man who “has been in Phoenix without papers for 14 years, but says now he’s afraid to walk the streets. So he’ll take his family and leave as soon as he can.” So the law is already working.

Weir’s whimpering came two nights after Sunday’s World News (NB item) where ABC anchor Dan Harris set up a story framed around the same agenda of Arizona law antagonists: “Many Hispanics, both legal and illegal, are already heading for the borders. And there’s a heated debate over whether that will cost the state more than it saves.” Barbara Pinto zeroed in on a woman who “worries about the quiet exodus – immigrant families already leaving the state in droves” and how “apartment building owner Rollie Rankin is hurting already.”

Weir’s take was reminiscent of a CBS Evening News story from back on May 3 (NB’s recitation), when Katie Couric noted that “hundreds of thousands” of illegal aliens live in Arizona, “but as Kelly Cobiella reports, many no longer feel welcome.” As if that were a bad thing.

Cobiella focused on the plight of one family and their children upset they would lose friends when the family fled to Colorado, complete with Cobiella pulling at heartstrings by showing teddy bears sitting on a sofa the family left behind on the street.

And NBC, from July 8: “NBC Reporter Discovers New Immigration Law Causing Illegals to Leave Arizona.”

July 15 NB post: “Indignant Over List of Illegals in Utah, ABC Condemns ‘Campaign of Intimidation’ by ‘Vigilantes‘”

The full story on the Tuesday, July 27 ABC World News, transcript provided by the MRC’s Brad Wilmouth:

DIANE SAWYER: Day after tomorrow, that new Arizona immigration law will take effect unless a federal judge steps in. Tonight, undocumented immigrants – many working in this country for decades – are fleeing the state, or hiding in fear, and Bill Weir has that from Arizona.

BILL WEIR: There is a fear-driven exodus going on in Arizona tonight. More vacant apartments, more empty shops, more kids disappearing from school.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN, CRYING: This is my home, and I don’t want to be separated from my family.

WEIR: It’s happening as police departments ready their jails and themselves for a surge in arrests. This video is now mandatory viewing, giving guidance on the new fine line between enforcement and profiling.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE VOICE: Diplomacy may be the greatest asset in these days to come.

WEIR: Meanwhile, Latino activists are urging their community to check their taillights, not travel in big groups and even remove the Catholic rosary beads from their rear view mirrors. All the better to avoid suspicion. Law student Daniel Rodriguez, undocumented since his mother brought him at age six, tells me of all the parents giving power of attorney to neighbors in case they’re deported without their American-born children.

DANIEL RODRIGUEZ, LAW STUDENT: Kids will be placed in child protective services and may not see their parents again for a long time.

WEIR: Beefed up patrols and the recession have actually made American borders more secure than any time in decades. But anger is still high in this state, and while this law may add another deterrent, it is most frightening to people already here. Francisco has been in Phoenix without papers for 14 years, but says now he’s afraid to walk the streets. So he’ll take his family and leave as soon as he can.

FRANCISCO AVILES: My kids born here, and now I have to come back to Mexico.

WEIR, TO RODRIGUEZ: What do you say to the person who says you are breaking the law by being in this country?

RODRIGUEZ CLIP #1: I think I would tell that person that the laws do not make sense.

RODRIGUEZ CLIP #2: I didn’t commit any moral wrong by being six and a half and coming with my family here.

WEIR: He is just one of many, hoping for reform while bracing for possible arrest. Bill Weir, ABC News, Phoenix.

UPDATE: HuffPo’s Jason Linkins offers explanation (see bottom)

Maybe this is the way former Hearst Newspapers columnist and so-called dean of the White House Press Corps Helen Thomas would have wanted it.

Although Thomas’ old seat in the White House press briefing room hasn’t officially been designated for a particular outlet, and this might be wishful thinking on the part of the Huffington Post’s Sam Stein, the White House correspondent for website, took the seat for the July 27 briefing with White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs.

Stein’s questions from the front row dealt with the possibility of President Barack Obama making recess appointment, in dealing with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and what he deemed the "lethargic pace" of judicial confirmations. Stein then followed up with four additional questions for his piece posted on the Huffington Post later that afternoon.

Video Below Fold

The future of Thomas’ former seat is still in question, with Fox News Channel, NPR and Bloomberg vying for the spot. It became part of the so-called "JournoList" controversy after it was revealed Michael Scherer of Time magazine, who recently won a seat on the board of directors of the White House Correspondents’ Association, but was part of the anti-Fox News thread on the JournoList listserv as Politics Daily’s Matt Lewis pointed out.

It’s not clear if the Huffington Post is lobbying for a more prominent spot in the briefing room nor why Stein couldn’t have asked from another spot in the briefing room.

UPDATE: According Jason Linkins, a reporter for The Huffington Post, it was Stein’s turn in the rotation of pool reporters occupying the old Helen Thomas seat. He cited a June 8 Michael Calederone story reporting that the White House Correspondents’ Association "may continue giving the seat to that day’s rotating pool reporter." 

If this is indeed the case, then hopefully we’ll see a reporter for an outlet that isn’t as favorable toward the Obama administration occupying the seat between now and when the Correspondents’ Association makes its decision.

The Daily Beast’s John Avlon tried to sever the Tea Party movement from the conservative legacy of Ronald Reagan in a Tuesday column on CNN.com. Avlon, a Tea Party hater, opined that a "key difference between Reagan’s rhetoric and [the tea party] is the comparative civility," and suggested that "Reagan…would have a hard time getting the GOP nomination today" for apparently not being conservative enough.

Avlon began his column, "2010 Tea Party echoes 1964 Reagan," by tying the Tea Party movement to the former president’s famous speech at the 1964 Republican convention, "A Time For Choosing." After giving three excerpts from the speech, the writer labeled it a "classic — smart, funny and still so resonant that the rhetoric Reagan used more than 50 years ago echoes in Tea Party protests today." Actually, Avlon erred in his math, as 1964 was only 46 years ago.

The senior political columnist for The Daily Beast continued in his analysis of Reagan’s speech:

Consistent with the Tea Party’s self-image, it was primarily an economic speech, advancing a small-government libertarian economic philosophy, making statistics come alive with talk of fallen empires and American history, arguments aided by the added urgency of global conflict with communism. There is the specter of growing government power eclipsing the Constitution, the perverse incentives of the welfare state as an insult to hardworking individuals, all culminating in a citizens’ resistance against elite liberals ruling by fiat from Washington.

Avlon then started to set up his claim that the former president wasn’t as conservative as many lionize him to be:

It is compelling stuff, with the pitch-perfect delivery of a trained actor finally getting to recite his own lines. Speakers echo its themes from stages today almost like a tribute band. But, of course, times have changed a lot since 1964 — and so some questions arise.

First, if America’s past was as idyllic as many Tea Party protesters seem to believe, how come Reagan was warning about America’s eclipse back when the "Andy Griffith Show" was still in prime time? Well, the top marginal tax rate was a whopping 70 percent then — almost double what it is today, and down from 90 percent just a year earlier. That’s cause for a serious debate about socialism. It’s a reminder that the past was never pure and simple — though some Americans might remember it that way because they were children then.

The writer is correct in pointing out this historical detail, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. When the federal income tax went into effect, with the passage of the 16th Amendment in 1913, the initial top marginal tax rate was 7%. This skyrocketed during World War I to a top rate of 77%, and was gradually decreased to 25% in 1925. It went up sharply again in 1932 to 63%, peaking at a whopping 94% in 1944 during World War II. The top rate stayed in the 90%+ range for almost 20 years until it dropped to 77% in 1964, the year of Reagan’s speech. It didn’t reach the 70% figure Avlon cited until the following year in 1965. Reagan’s first income tax reduction during his presidency cut the top rate from 70 to 50% in 1982, and it fell again to 38.5% in 1987 during his second term.

Before heralding the former president’s apparent "civility," Avlon had to touch on a hot-button issue both then and now: race. He did acknowledge that both Reagan and the Tea Party movement weren’t racist.

Second, Reagan’s speech did not mention civil rights, despite the fact that it was one of the dominant issues of that election. Both Reagan and Goldwater opposed the Civil Rights Act on constitutional grounds, and it was this rift that Kentucky Senate candidate Rand Paul was referring to when he awkwardly affirmed libertarians’ opposition to civil rights legislation. That does not mean that Reagan or Goldwater were racist — just as it is mistake to label the Tea Partiers of today racist — but that heroic fight wasn’t their primary or even secondary concern, nor was it that of their conservative constituents. Not coincidentally, the former Confederate states of the South realigned in 1964, with traditionally Democratic Mississippi voting 87 percent for the Republican Party.

Another key difference between Reagan’s rhetoric and today is the comparative civility. Reagan never attacks then-President Lyndon Johnson by name, and he is even careful to use the phrase "our liberal friends" when slapping the domestic left. He does not question their patriotism or call them communists — after all, the Cold War was still on, and that insult seemed more idiotic and offensive than it does now.

The 40th president may have used the "our liberal friends" phrase during his endorsement speech for Goldwater, but he also used rhetoric closer to today’s Tea Party activists, such as in a February 3, 1994 speech to Republicans: "Listening to the liberals, you’d think that the 1980s were the worst period since the Great Depression, filled with suffering and despair. I don’t know about you, but I’m getting awfully tired of the whining voices from the White House these days. They’re claiming there was a decade of greed and neglect, but you and I know better than that. We were there."

Near the end of his column, the CNN contributor then tried to spin the former president’s record to portray him as a government-expanding social liberal.

There is a final irony — the Reagan who was elected governor of California in 1966 and ran for president in 1980 would have a hard time getting the GOP nomination today. The self-appointed sentinels of conservatism  would have taken issue with the fact that as governor, Reagan raised taxes by a billion dollars to close a budget gap and increased the size of the state workforce by 50,000. He also raised taxes as president.

Social conservatives….would have hated that he signed the nation’s most liberal abortion bill into law. Reagan wouldn’t have been alone in his isolation from contemporary conservative absolutists — even Barry Goldwater could be painted as liberal today because of his support for gays in the military and the fact that his wife co-founded Planned Parenthood in his home state of Arizona in the 1930s.

Yes, it is true that Reagan raised taxes as president, but as he did earlier, Avlon isn’t telling the complete story, this time by omitting details. Reagan signed two income tax reductions, the first in 1982. He also signed that year, according to a 2003 column by Bruce Bartlett, "not one but two major tax increases. The Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act (TEFRA) raised taxes by $37.5 billion per year and the Highway Revenue Act raised the gasoline tax by another $3.3 billion." Bartlett went on to outline other tax increases that Reagan signed, but contrary to Avlon, he made it clear that he did this "not to besmirch Reagan’s reputation, but simply to set the record straight….I don’t believe that Reagan ever initiated any of the tax increases enacted during his watch….But when all the political and economic elites of this country gang up on a president to raise taxes, history shows that they always get what they want."

Also, the 1967 abortion law, which the former actor signed into law when he was governor, was the most liberal at the time, but as journalist Lou Cannon outlined in his 2003 book "Governor Reagan: His Rise to Power," he was no "pro-choice" activist:

In his heart, Reagan…really wanted to veto the Therapeutic Abortion Act. Instead, he subordinated his personal feelings to the commitment he had made to Republican [state] legislators to sign the bill. He wasn’t happy about it. "Those were awful weeks," Reagan told me a year later. He added that he would never have signed the bill if he had been more experienced as governor, the only time as governor or President that Reagan acknowledged a mistake on major legislation.

More significantly, when he was president, Reagan authored a pro-life article titled "Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation" for The Human Life Review in its Spring 1983 issue.

Avlon might have a point about ideological purists in the Tea Party, and in the conservative movement in general, taking issue with Reagan’s imperfect political record, but he made his point by selectively editing history.