Oregon residents and news followers nationwide can be forgiven for shaking their heads over the Associated Press's latest item on the misadventures of Congressman David Wu. All of a sudden he's apparently not a Democrat — well, at least he's not identified as such by the wire service's Jonathan J. Cooper.

Wu has gained a degree of infamy over his erratic behavior (to be described shortly for those unfamiliar with the story) leading up to his reelection in 2010.

What's odd about Cooper's failure to tag Wu as a Democrat in his latest report is that he and the AP have done so in several previous dispatches:

• A February 19 unbylined report ("Report: Congressman urged to get psychiatric help") identified Wu as a Democrat in its first paragraph.
• His February 23 item ("Newspapers, GOP call for congressman to resign") identified Wu as a Democrat twice, including once in its first paragraph, and later when it described his district as a "Democratic stronghold."
• A brief February 24 item on Wu ("Newspaper, GOP call for Wu to resign") named his party in the second paragraph.

The theory here is that now that Wu's woes have become a more prominent national story, the AP has decided that the party identification of Wu should came to a halt, lest readers get their minds polluted with the craaaaazy idea that politicians in various forms of trouble in recent years have been largely if not mostly from the Democratic Party. Logically (if there is such a thing at AP) it should have worked the opposite way, as national readers are less likely to already know that Wu is a Dem, and would be interested in knowing.

Here are several paragraphs from Cooper's Sunday evening report:

An Oregon congressman whose erratic behavior has recently prompted calls for his resignation said Sunday that some of his actions could be attributed to a reaction to a mental health drug.

 

U.S. Rep. David Wu told The Associated Press, however, that it does not explain the behavior documented in reports over the last month, which included sending his staff photos of himself wearing a tiger costume.

 

Wu said he was hospitalized after his 2008 campaign for symptoms that were later diagnosed as a reaction to a common mental health drug. He said he felt dizzy and confused on Election Day that year, when his staff and family reportedly were unable to locate him.

 

The AP interview in his Portland office was the most detailed public account yet of Wu's psychiatric treatment since reports of his erratic behavior first surfaced last month. Six staff members quit after his 2010 re-election campaign during which the congressman gave angry speeches and talked his way inside the secure portion of Portland International Airport.

 

The congressman said last year's episodes were the culmination of a period of mental health challenges that began in 2008 as marital issues led toward his separation from his wife.

 

… He declined to detail the problems in his marriage but said they had nothing to do with his health.

 

… Wu attributed his outbursts in 2010 to stress from a tough campaign, a dissolving marriage and taking care of his children, ages 11 and 13.

 

Asked whether he can handle the stresses of Congress and of a future campaign, Wu said his October episode happened during a period of such extreme stress that wouldn't occur again.

 

… Wu said he would not step down, despite calls for his resignation from Republicans and from some Oregon newspapers.

The last excerpted paragraph, the 18th of 19 in Cooper's full report, is the only clue that Wu is a Dem through and through.

Wu may have had problems with dizziness and confusion as described above, but it's nothing compared to the dizziness and confusion the AP's Cooper must have been enduring when he wrote this paragraph in his February 23 report (bold is mine):

Wu was a political newcomer when he was elected to Congress in 1998 as the first Chinese-American to serve in the U.S. House. He's maintained a centrist voting record but been a leading voice on human rights abuses in China, and he angered the high-tech firms in his district when he voted against normalizing trade relations with China.

Here are a couple of outside opinions concerning Wu's alleged "centrism":

• His 2009, 2008, and 2007 grades from the conservative, economic freedom-oriented Club for Growth are 0%, 0%, and 6%.
• At the ultraliberal Americans for Democratic Action in each of the same three years, he had ratings of 100%, 90%, and 100%. His 2009 and 2007 voting records earned him recognition as an "ADA Hero."

Earth to Jonathan Cooper regarding Wu's politics: Centrist, schmentrist.

Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.

  As the mainstream media have reported on the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s beliefs, failing to pick up on contradictory claims by its leaders that the Islamist group opposes terrorism, also ignored was the role that the Muslim Brotherhood has long played in fomenting anti-Jew hatred in the Middle East. After Nazi Germany financed and helped build up the previously struggling Brotherhood in the 1930s and 1940s, the group disseminated anti-Jew propaganda and inspired the kind of persecution that sent almost a million Jewish refugees fleeing violence, confiscation of property, and expulsion in Muslim countries between the 1940s and the 1970s. Some even estimate that the land confiscated from Jewish residents in Muslim countries amounts to four times or even five times the total area of the state of Israel. A number of Muslim countries saw their Jewish populations almost completely erased, including Egypt where the number dwindled from about 100,000 Jews to only a couple of hundred.

Even somewhat recently, Brotherhood leaders have made such incendiary statements as praising Adolf Hitler to declaring that Muslims should stop fighting each other and fight against Israel instead. As previously documented by NewsBusters, an interview on CNN's Parker-Spitzer helped reveal the tendency of Muslim Brotherhood leaders to twist the meaning of words, as one leader claimed that the group opposes terrorism and violence but then suggested that Palestinian militants are not engaged in terrorism against Israel but instead "resistance," which he rationalized. He also refused to give a straight answer on whether the group would support adherence to Egypt’s treaty with Israel.

But on the January 31 NBC Nightly News, not picking up on Muslim Brotherhood wordplay, correspondent Richard Engel claimed, "The Muslim Brotherhood denounces terrorism, but supports Islamic law, is anti-Israel, and opposes U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East."

On the February 6 World News Sunday, ABC’s Christiane Amanpour, having just interviewed a high-ranking Muslim Brotherhood member, claimed, "He told us the Brotherhood is not seeking the presidency or any cabinet position, and he says the Brotherhood accepts Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel."

Back to the Parker-Spitzer interview, when Eliot Spitzer asked if the Brotherhood had any connections to terrorist organizations, spokesman Mohammed Morsy claimed that his group opposes violence: "We do not have any kind of relationships with any organization that is practicing violence. We are against violence, wherever it comes from, governments, states, individuals, organizations. This is not acceptable at all."

But, moments later, when asked about Israel and the Palestinians, Morsy justified violent actions against Israel as "resistance" by Palestinians. Morsy: "We do not use violence against anyone. What’s going on on the Palestinian land is resistance. The resistance is acceptable by all mankind, and it’s the right of people to resist imperialism."

In the February 7, 2011, article, "The New Leader of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in His Own Words," CAMERA’s Steven Stotsky picked up on a translation of Mohammed Badie’s first public address after being chosen as Muslim Brotherhood leader in January 2010. Badie encouraged Muslims to stop fighting each other and fight against Israel instead:

"[The Arab and Muslim regimes] have forgotten, or are pretending to have forgotten, that the real enemy lying in wait for them is the Zionist entity. They are aiming their weapons against their own peoples, while avoiding any confrontation with these Zionists and achieving neither unity nor revival for their nations. Moreover, they are disregarding Allah's commandment to wage jihad for His sake with [their] money and [their] lives, so that Allah's word will reign supreme and the infidels' word will be inferior…

"Today the Muslims desperately need a mentality of honor and means of power [that will enable them] to confront global Zionism. [This movement] knows nothing but the language of force, so [the Muslims] must meet iron with iron, and winds with [even more powerful] storms. They crucially need to understand that the improvement and change that the [Muslim] nation seeks can only be attained through jihad and sacrifice and by raising a jihadi generation that pursues death just as the enemies pursue life."

As he complained about the most recent negotiations between the Palestinian Authority and Israel, Badie declared that "Resistance is the only solution."

Stotsky also cited the Carnegie Guide to Egypt’s Elections as having related that "Badie’s election was generally viewed as a victory for the Brotherhood’s conservative wing and a marginalization of its reformist trend."

In the February 16, 2011, article, "Tariq Ramadan Obscures the Truth About Muslim Brotherhood," CAMERA's Dexter Van Zile recounted Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader Yusef Qaradawi’s recent history of expressing admiration for Adolf Hitler:

Then there are the public statements of Yusef Qaradawi, who was twice offered the position of Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood and who is described as the movement's spiritual leader or father figure. In January 2009 he stated that Hitler was a "divine tool" sent to punish the Jewish people for their sins. He also called on Allah to "take this oppressive, Jewish, Zionist band of people. Oh Allah, do not spare a single one of them. Oh Allah, count their numbers, and kill them, down to the very last one." (Qaradawi, who is mentioned nowhere in Ramadan's piece, offered a prayer in the 1995 funeral of Tariq's father, Said Ramadan.)

The same article also relates German Professor and author Matthias Kuntzel's contention that anti-Jewish sentiment in the Middle East was fomented by the Muslim Brotherhood:

"The Muslim Brotherhood was also responsible for stoking anti-Jewish hostility – not just in Palestine – but in Egypt as well. Matthias Küntzel, author of Jihad and Jew Hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11 (2009, Telos), reports that the Muslim Brotherhood was a "driving force" behind "a shift in direction in Egypt from a rather neutral or pro-Jewish mood to a rabidly anti-Zionist or anti-Jewish one, a shift that changed the whole Arab world and affects it to this day." This shift, Küntzel states, took place between 1925 and 1945 and was stoked by a 1936 boycott against Jewish business owners in Egypt organized by the Muslim Brotherhood. Küntzel writes "In mosques, schools, and workplaces, the Brotherhood worked up the believers with the legend that the Jews and British wished to destroy the holy places of Jerusalem, tear up the Koran, and trample it underfoot." (Page 21)"

In the September 17, 2007, Weekly Standard article, "Jew-Hatred and Jihad; The Nazi Roots of the 9/11 Attack," Matthias Kuntzel recounted the Muslim Brotherhood’s embrace of the grand mufti of Jerusalem, and Nazi ally Amin al-Husseini, and its role in stirring up violence against Jews in the Middle East:

After World War II it became apparent that the center of global Jew-hatred was shifting from Nazi Germany to the Arab world. In November 1945, just half a year after the end of the Third Reich, the Muslim Brothers carried out the worst anti-Jewish pogroms in Egypt's history, when demonstrators penetrated the Jewish quarters of Cairo on the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration. They ransacked houses and shops, attacked non-Muslims, and torched the synagogues. Six people were killed, and some hundred more injured. A few weeks later the Islamists' newspapers "turned to a frontal attack against the Egyptian Jews, slandering them as Zionists, Communists, capitalists and bloodsuckers, as pimps and merchants of war, or in general, as subversive elements within all states and societies," as Gudrun Krämer wrote in her study The Jews in Egypt 1914-1952.

In 1946, the Brotherhood made sure that Heinrich Himmler's friend Amin al-Husseini, the former grand mufti who was being sought as a war criminal by Britain and the United States, was granted asylum and a new lease on political life in Egypt. As leader of the Palestine National Movement, al-Husseini had been a close ally of both the Muslim Brotherhood and the Nazis. Based in Berlin from 1941 to 1945, he had directed the Muslim SS divisions in the Balkans and had been personally responsible for blocking negotiations late in the war that might have saved thousands of Jewish children from the gas chambers. All this was known in 1946. Nonetheless, Britain and the United States chose to forgo criminal prosecution of al-Husseini in order to avoid spoiling their relations with the Arab world. France, which was holding al-Husseini, deliberately let him get away.

For many in the Arab world, what amounted to amnesty for this prominent Islamic authority who had spent the war years broadcasting Nazi propaganda from Berlin was a vindication of his actions. They started to view his Nazi past with pride, not shame, and Nazi criminals on the wanted list in Europe now flooded into the Arab world. Large print-runs of the most infamous libel of the Jews, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, were published in the following decades at the behest of two well-known former members of the Muslim Brotherhood, Gamal Abdel Nasser and Anwar Sadat. Both the Muslim Brothers' unconditional solidarity with al-Husseini and their anti-Jewish riots mere months after Auschwitz show that the Brotherhood did not object, to say the least, to Hitler's attempt to exterminate the Jews of Europe.

In the January 31, 2011, American Thinker article, "Why We Should Fear the Moslem Brother," Karin McQuillan recounted:

What you haven't been told is this: the Moslem Brothers were a small, unpopular group of anti-modern fanatics unable to attract members, until they were adopted by Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich beginning in the 1930s. Under the tutelage of the Third Reich, the Brothers started the modern jihadi movement, complete with a genocidal program against Jews. In the words of Matthias Kuntzel, "[t]he significance of the Brotherhood to Islamism is comparable to that of the Bolshevik Party to communism: It was and remains to this day the ideological reference point and organizational core for all later Islamist groups, including al-Qaeda and Hamas."

What is equally ominous for Jews and Israel is that despite Mubarak's pragmatic coexistence with Israel for the last thirty years, every Egyptian leader from Nasser through Sadat to Mubarak has enshrined Nazi Jew-hatred in mainstream Egyptian culture out of both conviction and political calculation. Nasser, trained by Nazis as a youth, spread the genocidal conspiracy theories of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, making it a bestseller throughout the Arab world. On the Ramadan following 9/11, Mubarak presided over a thirty-week-long TV series dramatizing Elders and its genocidal message.

She later continued:

In the 1930s, the Third Reich poured men, money, weapons, and propaganda training into the Moslem Brotherhood. It was the Reich that taught the fundamentalists to focus their anger on the Jews instead of on women. By war's end, thanks entirely to Hitler's tutelage and direct support, the brotherhood had swelled to a million members, and Jew-hatred had become central to mainstream Arab culture. Iranian Ayatollah Khomeini listened daily to the Nazi propaganda broadcast from Berlin by Moslem Brother Haj Amin al-Husseini. So did every Arab with a radio, throughout the war, as it was the most popular programming in the Middle East. Thanks to Hitler, the Moslem Brothers enshrined anti-Semitism as the main organizing force of Middle East politics for the next eighty years.

"It seems long past time for reputable news sites to clamp down on the gutter talk."

That is James Rainey, the "On the Media" critic at the Los Angeles Times, fretting in an article today (Sun., 2/27/11) about the tone of readers' comments that are posted on news web sites.

If Rainey wants to "clamp down on the gutter talk" by readers, he needs to take a closer look at his own employer's site, latimes.com.

Less than 48 hours ago, one of Rainey’s colleagues, columnist Tim Rutten, published an article about the outgoing archbishop of Los Angeles, Roger Cardinal Mahony.

Here is a small sampling of some of the comments that readers posted about the Catholic leader. All of them are still publicly viewable (as of this posting).

maximusb30 at 8:54 PM February 26, 2011
Dirtbag Mahony -
You ruined the church and the city of Los Angeles … Go rot somewhere, in a cesspool of your own filth …

EAGDSD at 4:10 AM February 26, 2011
Let's tar and feather this ped-pleaser and run him out of town.

RobertNewrock at 3:51 PM February 26, 2011
Mahoney (sic) and the church are guilty of racketeering, plain and simple, a criminal enterprise … Mahoney (sic) should commit suicide.

dbanks1024 at 3:49 PM February 26, 2011
I hope that this protector of child predators ROTS IN HELL like he so rightly deserves. Its (sic) anybody's guess how many children he may have also sexually preyed upon.

What prompted Rainey's article were comments left in response to the news story about the brutal attack on CBS' Lara Logan. Rainey is troubled that some commenters "sought to mete out their digital revenge by blaming all Muslims for the attack on Logan."

Fair enough. But as we see above, ugly comments are nothing new at the Los Angeles Times.

Where was Rainey a couple of years ago when readers of the Times posted sick and tasteless comments after an article about the death of Fox News Channel reporter and White House spokesperson Tony Snow? LA Times watchdog Patterico authored not one – but two (!) – articles about this awful episode at the paper. (Warning: Read at your own risk. The comments are vile.)

Commenters at latimes.com have recklessly and maliciously attacked conservatives and Catholics with impunity for years.

Yes, readers' comments need to be better regulated and moderated. But it is somewhat disturbing that it took the twisted attacks on Lara Logan for Rainey to finally realize that readers can get inappropriately nasty on the comment board.

– Dave Pierre is the author of the book, Double Standard: Abuse Scandals and the Attack on the Catholic Church. Dave is also the creator of TheMediaReport.com and is a contributing writer to NewsBusters.

Almost the entire media skipped this chilling honor-killing verdict from Arizona on Tuesday, from Reuters: "An Arizona jury on Tuesday found an Iraqi immigrant guilty of second-degree murder for running down his daughter with a Jeep because she had become too Westernized." Faleh Almaleki killed his daughter Noor in October 2009 because she spurned his arranged marriage and was living with her boyfriend. Apparently, to report this is to be "Islamophobic."

NPR skipped Almaleki, but they noted the verdict in another horrific killing on Monday night's All Things Considered: Aasiya Hassan was beheaded by her husband Mozzamil in 2009 as the two headed a Buffalo television project designed to create better understanding about Muslims. NPR reporter Dina Temple-Raston's objective was to deny this crime was about Islam. Instead, she said, it was simply about domestic violence.

NPR anchor Robert Siegel tried to explain that "at the time, the media seized on the murder as an honor killing. That's a killing allowed in some Muslim societies when shame has been brought on a family. But NPR's Dina Temple-Raston reports from Buffalo, the Hassan case is really about domestic violence and it forced an entire community to reckon with stereotypes."

"The media" didn't exactly seize on Aasiya Hassan. But Glenn Beck did, and some local news outlets. Temple-Raston was insisting Beck and Company were all wrong, that they were purveying negative stereotypes. She went directly to Dr. Khalid Qazi for her thesis, a man she said "looks like Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch in 'To Kill a Mockingbird.'" She did not explain he was a head of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, a professional spin controller on these issues, or that Dr. Qazi recently welcomed Ground Zero Mosque imam Faisal Abdul-Rauf to Buffalo:

Dr. QAZI: Nobody in the community can get their arms around that notion that he would not only kill her, he would stab her 40, 50 and perhaps 60 times and then decapitate her. There's absolutely no stomach for that.

TEMPLE-RASTON: Because she was Muslim, because of the way she was killed, and because Aasiya Hassan had filed for divorce just days before the murder, the media assumed that the killing was sanctioned by Islam.

Unidentified Woman Anchor: A brutal crime in Buffalo, New York. A Pakistani-born man is accused of beheading his wife, and there's speculation it may be a so-called honor killing.

Mr. GLENN BECK (Host, "The Glenn Beck Program"): All right. This guy started a Muslim-American cable TV network to challenge stereotypes about his faith. You know, apparently, we're just too stupid. We just all think that all Muslims are bad.

TEMPLE-RASTON: That was Glenn Beck talking about the case. In fact, the Muslim community was being stereotyped. Dr. Qazi said news of the murder was everywhere.

Dr. QAZI: So there is this constant reminder of this monster who we all tried to project and help to establish a lifestyle television channel to show who we are and what we stand for and then we get this.

TEMPLE-RASTON: Buffalo's Muslim community had already had its share of these kinds of stories. There were suspicions after the 911 attacks. And then, to make matters worse, a year after 911, six young Muslims from the Lackawanna community, just outside of Buffalo, were arrested and pleaded guilty to training at an al-Qaeda camp. Against that backdrop, stereotyping was easy. This had to be an honor killing, except it wasn't.

The idea that Mo Hassan's murder was "everywhere" is simply untrue. As I noted at the time, the national media (including for a while, NPR) were certainly not picking up the story, despite the enormous news hook of "Muslim-understanding czar beheads wife." The outlets that did report it predictably downplayed the Muslim angle.

But pay attention to that part about the Lackawanna Six. Temple-Raston wrote an entire book on those terrorists in training called The Jihad Next Door. At Amazon, the Booklist review crackles with how this NPR reporter exposes the dark age of Bush:

As she sensitively portrays each of the five men currently behind bars, she reveals their dire naïveté and profound regrets, which stand in stark contrast to her revelations regarding the Bush administration's use of the Lackawanna case to bolster the Patriot Act and to justify the assassination of Derwish, an American citizen. Compelling and clarifying, Temple-Raston's invaluable exposé will stand as one illuminated chapter in a dark saga of governmental crimes and cover-ups.

In the Aasiya Hassan story, Temple-Raston brought in another sympathetic expert, professor Remla Parthasarathy of the "Social Justice Clinic" at the University of Buffalo, who recently argued in a Buffalo News op-ed that there was no "cultural concern" in this typical case of domestic violence:

Prof. PARTHASARATHY: Honor killings are something that is sanctioned and approved by extended family. That wasn't the case here. Religious leaders in the Muslim community came out and denounced it. And they said it wasn't an honor killing, and I respect that.

TEMPLE-RASTON: In fact, when Aasiya's horrified family returned from Pakistan for her burial two years ago, it became very clear that this was a domestic violence case. Mo and Aasiya Hassan were not particularly religious. In fact, no one could recall ever seeing Mo Hassan at the mosque. As time went on, community leaders were presented with a stark choice: either allow others to stereotype the community or move aggressively to redefine the killing.

They came up with a novel approach: embark on a domestic violence education campaign. That allowed them to battle the honor killing stereotype, and it also provided new protection for battered women in the community. Domestic abuse had been an issue in the community all along. But according to Kathy Jamil, she's the principal of a local Islamic school, no one wanted to admit it.

Ms. KATHY JAMIL (Principal, Universal School): When this happened, everyone wanted to respond because it became very real for them, even though domestic violence happens. And I think a lot of that was really because now, Islam was under attack.

TEMPLE-RASTON: Islam was under attack, she said. And that's what finally focused minds on the issue.

"Islam was under attack." That apparently means it's time for NPR to run to the rescue.

Earlier: NPR Reporter Wrote Book on 'Dangerous Erosion' of Rights Under Bush with Executive Director of the ACLU

Newsweek's Eleanor Clift on Friday amazingly asked, "Since when does Scott Walker represent 'the people'?"

Such happened during a heated discussion on PBS's "The McLaughlin Group" about the goings-on in Wisconsin (video follows with transcript and commentary):

PAT BUCHANAN, MSNBC: You've got to stop the, they call it collective bargaining. It is collusive bargaining. What you've got is a union puts enormous amounts of money in, they get their buddy in the governor’s chair, then they get together, they cut a deal, give them a sweetheart contract and give it to the taxpayers. What this Governor Walker is saying, “Those days are over. We've got somebody representing the people now, and this is going to be an adversary proceeding between you folks and us.”

JONATHAN CAPEHART, WASHINGTON POST: None of these deals are over unless you’re police or firefighters.

ELEANOR CLIFT, NEWSWEEK: Since when does Scott Walker represent "the people"? He’s representing…

BUCHANAN AND MONICA CROWLEY TOGETHER: He got elected!

CLIFT: …the money interests that helped him get elected including…

JOHN MCLAUGHLIN, HOST: Let her finish.

CLIFT: …including lots of money from the Koch brothers.

Yes, that whopping $43,000 that Walker got from the Kochs, which Clift and her ilk conveniently ignore represented a small fraction of the millions he raised last year.

Maybe someone should have told Eleanor that Walker won in 2010 by roughly the same margin Barack Obama did in 2008, as she certainly thinks the current White House resident represents "the people".

More importantly, as is clearly evident in Clift’s protestations, Democrats elected with union money represent the people. Republicans supported by individuals don’t.

As I’ve said for years, it takes a lot of rationalizations to be a liberal these days.

CBS’s Bob Schieffer hit Republican New Jersey Governor Chris Christie from the left on Sunday’s Face the Nation, claiming he has “demonized” teachers and urging him to give some “straight talk” about the necessity to raise taxes.

After asking if he thinks “Governor Walker out there in Wisconsin has gone too far?” in trying to end collective bargaining, Schieffer ludicrously asserted “everybody in this country on all sides of this thinks we need education reform,” but he wanted to know if Christie realized his stance has “demonized teachers and will raise questions in young people's minds as to whether they want to go into the profession?”

“Banal Bob” soon implored Christie with his standard plea: “You have a reputation as a straight talker, I think. Do you believe that the budgetary problems across this country can be resolved without raising taxes?”

Christie zinged Schieffer with solid retorts to Schieffer’s left-wing presumptions, telling Schieffer “I disagree with the premise of your question which is that everybody agrees there should be education reform. It’s everybody but the teachers union who believes that everything is fine.”
 
On increasing taxes: “We raised taxes and fees 115 times in the last eight years. And we still have one of the worst budget problems in America.”

From the Sunday, February 27 Face the Nation on CBS:

BOB SCHIEFFER: You really came on hard against the teachers' union. I think everybody in this country on all sides of this thinks we need education reform, that we got to do something to make our educational system better. Do you worry that the stance you have taken has somehow demonized teachers and will raise questions in young people's minds as to whether they want to go into the profession?

GOVERNOR CHRIS CHRISTIE: No, I don't. I think quite the opposite. Listen, I think that the teachers in New Jersey and there's thousands and thousands of great ones, deserve a union as good as they are. They don't have it. And I disagree with the premise of your question which is that everybody agrees there should be education reform. It’s everybody but the teachers union who believes that everything is fine. If you listen to them in New Jersey they'll tell you everything is fine. It's great. It's great except for the 104,000 kids in New Jersey that are stuck in 200 chronically failing schools….

SCHIEFFER: You have a reputation as a straight talker, I think. Do you believe that the budgetary problems across this country can be resolved without raising taxes?

CHRISTIE: Let's take New Jersey, for instance, Bob. We raised taxes and fees 115 times in the last eight years. And we still have one of the worst budget problems in America. And so I think unless you deal with the underlying structural expense problems — and we've been dealing with them in New Jersey — there’s no amount of taxation will keep up with the amount of spending increase that we have….

— Brent Baker is Vice President for Research and Publications at the Media Research Center. Click here to follow him on Twitter.

University of Virginia media professor Siva Vaidhyanathan on Sunday said the Huffington Post is a bigger threat to journalism than Google.

Such occurred during a discussion about the internet behemoth on CNN's "Reliable Sources" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

HOWARD KURTZ, HOST: Does Google help or hurt news organizations that actually pay reporters? You don't have to, if you're not so inclined, go to "The New York Times" Web site or CNN.com. You can search for the one thing on the one story whether it's Egypt or the Wisconsin budget battle, and you can find it through Google.

Does that hurt news organizations?

SIVA VAIDHYANATHAN, PROFESSOR OF MEDIA STUDIES, UVA: I think, ultimately, that sort of environment helps both citizens and news organizations in the long term, largely because there's certain organizations — particular news organizations that will do well in this environment are those that choose to understand Google. So look at how organizations like "Huffington Post" have excelled. Even "The New York Times" have excelled in terms of getting Web readership since search engines, Google in particular, became the dominant way we find information.

Those organizations have learned to master the environment. Now, that has positive and negative effects.

KURTZ: By which you mean, for those who are not computer savvy, they have learned to use certain phrases, keywords, headlines that will attract, that will lift them up in the Google rankings, and attract traffic, which is how they sell advertising.

VAIDHYANATHAN: And the bad way of looking at that is that "Huffington Post" is gaming the system. The good way is "Huffington Post" has figured out a model to attract a lot of attention.

Of course, I think the biggest threat in journalism is actually "Huffington Post," because it's actually taking and attracting attention for its advertisers and repositioning the work done by local news organizations. That 's a very different environment.

KURTZ: So Arianna is a threat to us all?

VAIDHYANATHAN: I think "The Huffington Post" is a much stronger threat to local journalism and to independent journalism organizations than Google is. Google actually does nothing but help, as far as I can see.

KURTZ: Well, maybe that's why AOL paid $350 million for "The Huffington Post."

Indeed. What Siva didn't mention was another difference between Google and HuffPo is that the internet behemoth pays its employees.

It goes without saying that a huge threat to professional journalism today is Huffington's model of not compensating many of its contributors.

As NewsBusters reported, CNN on Thursday named the blogger that prank called Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker its "Most Intriguing Person of the Day."

On CNN's "Reliable Sources" Sunday, host Howard Kurtz noted the hypocrisy here saying, "If anybody who worked for CNN did what this guy did, they would have been fired" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

HOWARD KURTZ, HOST: Let me move on to the coverage of what has been this prank call. This was Ian Murphy, of "The Buffalo Beast," which is an alternative news site, getting a call through to Governor Scott Walker, pretending to be one of the billionaire Koch brothers. And it was really striking to me the way this was covered.

We're going to show you part of that call, and then an interview with Ian Murphy with MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell. Let's roll it.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

GOV. SCOTT WALKER (R), WISCONSIN: Sooner or later, the media stops finding it interesting.

IAN MURPHY, "THE BUFFALO BEAST": Well, not the liberal batters on MSNBC.

WALKER: Oh, yes. But who watches that? And I went on "Morning Joe" this morning –

MURPHY: Joe's a good guy. He's one of us.

WALKER: Yes. He was fair to me. I mean, the rest of them that are out there –

(END AUDIO CLIP)

LAWRENCE O'DONNELL, MSNBC: The governor seemed very comfortable and eager to talk to you. Were you surprised that it went as smoothly as it did?

MURPHY: Just getting on the line with him with was a feat in itself, I think. And I think he's just oblivious, generally. So it didn't surprise me.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ: Amy Holmes, MSNBC led with this hour after hour. The focus was on the embarrassment of Scott Walker. Nobody seemed to mention that this guy lied, that he committed a journalistic fraud, pretending to be someone else. Why?

AMY HOLMES, CO-ANCHOR, "AMERICA'S MORNING NEWS": Right. Well, I think because it fits their ideological framework. And I looked at this, and he was hailed as "Most Intriguing Person of the Day" by CNN. And you didn't see the hand-wringing over journalistic ethics like you did, say, in the ACORN case, when those two young people used the same sorts of tactics of being an impostor and sort of — some people would say tricking people into participating in this. And there, there was a huge discussion about journalism and is this fair, is this right?

In this, it was, like, he's a hero. He accomplished a feat, as you just heard.

KURTZ: I was also struck by CNN saying he was the "Most Intriguing Person." If anybody who worked for CNN did what this guy did, they would have been fired.

Kudos to Kurtz for raising this subject and pointing out the hypocrisy of no media outlets questioning the journalistic fraud employed by Murphy.

On the other hand, as his focus initially was MSNBC, would he have mentioned CNN's role if Holmes hadn't brought it up?

Hmmm.

Shades of bitter-clingers!

Chuck Todd has developed an interesting device to delegitimize support for Gov. Scott Walker, depicting his backers as uneducated, frustrated, blue-collar people who are willing to "lash out at government workers."

Yup, there's no respectable basis to support Walker and his call for reforms on a collective bargaining system that have nearly wrecked Wisconsin and many other states.  No, there's just the irrational reaction of the embittered, ignorant masses.

Todd offered his explanation on today's Morning Joe in explaining that the Obama administration is backing off a bold stand on Wisconsin given its swing-state status.

View video after the jump.

I'll be back with a transcript, but in the meantime, watch Todd trash support for Walker.

 On Sunday’s NBC Nightly News, a report filed by correspondent Kevin Tibbles mislabeled the Democratic Mayor of Providence, Rhode Island, Angel Taveras, as a Republican during the piece which recounted that the city’s school board had fired all its teachers with the intent to hire back some of them to help solve the city’s budget problems.

Anchor Lester Holt briefly referred to protesters in Madison, Wisconsin, as he introduced the report:

In Madison, Wisconsin, protesters who’ve camped out at the state capitol for more than a week were under orders to clean up and get out today, meaning remove their sleeping bags, their signs, and themselves. Tonight, hundreds have done so. Wisconsin is one of many states public employees find themselves under fire, and there’s one profession getting hit surprisingly hard as NBC's Kevin Tibbles reports.

After a clip of Providence Teachers Union President Steve Smith complaining about the city’s action, Tibbles moved to the soundbite of Mayor Taveras that had him misidentified as a Republican:

KEVIN TIBBLES: The city says it will rehire the teachers it needs and let the rest go. Staring at a crippling deficit, the mayor says it’s time for drastic action.

MAYOR ANGEL TAVERAS (R-PROVIDENCE): We’re facing an unprecedented, unprecedented fiscal crisis in our city.

Below is a complete transcript of the report from the Sunday, February 27, NBC Nightly News :

LESTER HOLT: In Madison, Wisconsin, protesters who’ve camped out at the state capitol for more than a week were under orders to clean up and get out today, meaning remove their sleeping bags, their signs, and themselves. Tonight, hundreds have done so. Wisconsin is one of many states public employees find themselves under fire, and there’s one profession getting hit surprisingly hard as NBC's Kevin Tibbles reports.

KEVIN TIBBLES: School board members in Providence, Rhode Island, voted Thursday not to lay off teachers but to fire them all.

STEVE SMITH, PROVIDENCE TEACHERS UNION: They fired 1,926 teachers with no plan.

TIBBLES: The city says it will rehire the teachers it needs and let the rest go. Staring at a crippling deficit, the mayor says it’s time for drastic action.

MAYOR ANGEL TAVERAS (D-PROVIDENCE): We’re facing an unprecedented, unprecedented fiscal crisis in our city.

TIBBLES: Budget deficits and seemingly ironclad benefits packages now have teachers nationwide, including here in New York, under scrutiny.

MAYOR MICHAEL BLOOMBERG (I-NYC): When I say we have a budget deficit-

TIBBLES: Mayor Mike Bloomberg says he’s a supporter of unions, but his new city budget suggests close to 4,700 teachers could lose their jobs. The teachers responded with this ad:

CLIP OF AD: Mayor Bloomberg sees things differently than the rest of us. Our schools are short of money, yet he refuses to ask millionaires to pay their fair share.

TIBBLES: And in New Jersey, the governor has made teachers a central theme.

GOVERNOR CHRIS CHRISTIE (R-NJ) CLIP #1: Really, it's two places left in America where there's a profession where there is no reward for excellence and no consequence for failure. Of course, we all know the first one is weathermen.

CHRISTIE CLIP #2: Unfortunately, the second one is teaching.

CHESTER FINN, THOMAS B. FORDHAM INSTITUTE: The current situation is undesirable, both fiscally and educationally. It’s not good for kids. It’s not good for taxpayers.

TIBBLES: But there is concern as cities ask schools to do more with less, the children will suffer.

AARON PALLAS, COLUMBIA TEACHERS COLLEGE: Schools are seen as the last bastion of a kind of social order. And so, to have them subject to this kind of upheaval can't be good for kids.

TIBBLES: Doing the math in a fiscal crisis may leave schools feeling the pinch. Kevin Tibbles, NBC News, New York.