The Hollywood Reporter publicized that Yahoo! has "teamed up" with the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) to monitor "hateful and violent" comments on their many online platforms. GLAAD reported finding comments violating Yahoo's terms of service under an interview with the gay singer Adam Lambert. (There is presently NO space to comment on Adam Lambert posts here. Or here. Or here. But if you hate Simon Cowell, comment here. There are 1,059 comments.)

Allison Palmer, GLAAD's Director of Digital Initiatives, issued a statement commending Yahoo! for addressing the issue quickly and highlighting its continued pledge to address anti-LGBT comments across all of its platforms. "Young music fans should be able to interact and comment on sites without seeing violent, hateful comments directed at LGBT people," Palmer said. But wait — does that mean all "anti-LGBT comments" get scrubbed? Or all comments?

There is nothing wrong with taking down comments wishing violence on gay people. Censor away. But would GLAAD also like to take down comments suggesting homosexuality is wrong? Anyone who follows them would strongly suspect that when companies like Yahoo! bow to GLAAD pressure, it's not just about eliminating violent comments, but all "anti-LGBT comments."

Could one suggest song titles like "Naked Love" are too risque for kids? This might even include comments suggesting a performer like Lambert is a screechy, egotistical hack — in other words, the kind of commentary Simon Cowell gets for canning Paula Abdul.

In noting the latest White House "hangout" with questions from YouTube users, Amie Parnes of The Hill noted that President Obama has failed to hold a press conference since early October — three months without engaging with White House reporters who might feel professional pressure to ask unexpected hardball questions. Instead, Obama submits himself to softball sessions with ABC's Diane Sawyer or Barbara Walters.

She reported Towson University professor Martha Joynt Kumar’s research indicates Obama has held more solo White House news conferences (17) than George W. Bush in his first three years (11). "On the other hand, Obama has held far fewer news conferences than former Presidents Clinton and George H.W. Bush, who held 31 and 56 news conferences, respectively." He prefers the more controlled individual interviews — often loaded with softballs like which super power he'd like to have.

Obama is out-performing both Bush and Clinton when it comes to interviews — 408 in his first three years, according to Kumar, compared to Bush’s 136 and Clinton’s 166.

Obama has been less likely to answer impromptu questions at photo-ops and other spur-of-the-moment sessions with reporters. Obama has only held 94 of these short Q&As, while George W. Bush and Clinton respectively held 307 and 493 in their first three years.

“I’m reminded of Eisenhower’s press secretary who once wrote, ‘To hell with slanted reporters, we’ll go directly to the people,’ ” Kumar said. But these reporters aren't exactly a phalanx of right-wing Obama haters. They represent establishment news agencies that warmly chronicled his 2008 campaign.
 

Once again, CNN sympathized with an illegal immigrant supporting the largely Democratic-sponsored DREAM Act. Anchor Brooke Baldwin on Tuesday hailed "DREAMer" Mayra Hidalgo who blistered Republicans for their rigidity on immigration.

Baldwin let Hidalgo air this message to certain Republican candidates: "Do you even have a heart?" The immigrant directed her ire at Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney for saying an illegal immigrant would have to serve in the military to earn citizenship. "You're messing with people's lives," she ranted. [Video below the break. Click here for audio.]

Of course, nowhere in the story was a conservative voice opposing the DREAM Act, just soundbites from Hidalgo airing her side of the story.

"As a child of immigrants, as – an immigrant myself, I feel like my role has always been to go to school, work really hard, and have a career. And that's what I want to do, but it's so difficult when you don't have a legal status," Hidalgo lamented.

"Do you understand that, you know, these aren't just those illegals? We're humans, we're people here," she cried out at Gingrich and Romney. "There are other ways to serve this country. Just being a doctor, being an attorney – those are just as important ways to serve our country just like the military," insisted Hidalgo.

For a full transcript, and to read more, click here.

Liberals hate it when conservative politicians talk about their religion. Except when they don't. They hate that too.

Damned if they do, damned if they don't. (video after page break)

An example of this could be seen Monday night on "The Rachel Maddow Show" when Maddow was talking about Mitt Romney with guest Frank Rich, former drama critic for the New York Times now writing for New York magazine.

Rich theorized that Romney fails to connect with many voters because of reticence about his Mormon religion –

RICH: One thing that I've been grappling with, I think a lot of people have been, is why does this guy not connect? Why has he seemed plastic, basically? And the standard answer is, he's stiff, he's rich, he needs better performance skills, he needs to learn how to speak better before crowds. But I think part of it is also that there's one thing that he feels really passionate about is his religion. He's had a long history in the Mormon church as a leader and because he feels, and it would be sad if it was true, that people are bigoted about it, he just doesn't want to talk about it. And yet, that's something I think he probably cares about more than Bain and all the money and all the Cayman Islands and Swiss bank accounts. But I think you feel that there's some-, you're not getting the true Romney and I don't think we are.

MADDOW: So you feel like because, maybe that is the thing that he could tell stories about, that he could talk about in a personal way that would, for lack of a better term, animate him, that would make us sense more of who he is.

RICH: I agree. I think that's exactly it and I think, look, the Mormon religion is a really interesting kind of great American story that, you know, a lot of things about it have been good for the country and helped build the country, particularly in the West, but he just doesn't go there. So it's almost as if he's closeted about his religion and I think that makes him seem fake.

Say for the sake of argument that Romney did as Rich suggests and spoke more about his religion. Can there be any doubt that liberals like Rich and Maddow would hesitate all of a nanosecond before condemning Romney as yet another conservative foisting his religion on others?

Another scenario comes to mind: Romney elaborates on his Mormonism as Rich suggests. Followed by Rich criticizing Romney for not divulging enough, campaigning when he should be observant, not leading Mormon pride parades through Salt Lake City … the demands would never end.

What is arguably most notable about Rich's criticism is the compliment he included in it, describing Romney's religion as something "he probably cares about more than Bain and all the money and all the Cayman Islands and Swiss bank accounts." Mark your calendar — this may be the only praise of Romney you'll ever hear on MSNBC, or at least during that 95 percent of its airtime when the views heard are from left of center.

On Tuesday's NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams fretted over winter doing a "disappearing act" and proclaimed: "It was so warm today across much of the country, as you know, they're calling it June-uary. It's got a lot of people wondering whatever happened to winter?" The headline on screen pondered: "Where's Winter?"

In the report that followed, chief environmental affairs correspondent Anne Thompson added to the alarmism as she declared: "This most unusual January ending on a remarkably mild note across the country….2,890 daily high temperature records broken or tied." She later cited climatologist and global warming proponent Dr. Gerald Meehl of the National Center for Atmospheric Research: "Add to that a world warming because of climate change and it stacks the deck, Dr. Meehl says, against a traditional winter."

On Wednesday's NBC Today, Thompson went further, seeming to suggest that the more mild temperatures actually caused deaths: "In upstate New York, where Lake George is only partly frozen, they are trucking in ice to build the winter carnival castle. Thin ice in Patterson, Iowa tragically took the lives of two friends out fishing."

In January of 2007, during a similar period of unseasonably warm weather, former Today co-host Meredith Vieira went so far as to blurt out: "So I'm running in the park on Saturday, in shorts thinking this is great but are we all gonna die?"

On Wednesday, Thompson repeated her assertion that it was a "most unusual winter" and noted how: "It is confusing crops in California, blooming too soon….The Sandhill cranes are early birds, returning to Lincoln County, Nebraska, a month ahead of schedule. So, yes, even nature is confused."

Concluding the morning segment, Thompson again pushed the global warming message: "Now scientists are unwilling to pin any one weather event on climate change but they say there's no question that our warming world is shifting the odds against a traditional winter, winters as we have known them."

Back in November, just days after a snowstorm the weekend before Halloween, Williams somberly observed: "Everybody out East said the same thing about this freak snowstorm, 'This kind of thing didn't used to happen. This never happened before.'"

In the report Thompson did at that time, she cited the same climate scientist, Dr. Meehl: "He says our warming planet makes extreme weather events more likely as greenhouse gases created by burning fossil fuels, such as oil, gas and coal, alter the climate."

President Obama and his radical feminist enforcers have had it in for Catholic medical providers from the get-go. It's about time all people of faith fought back against this unprecedented encroachment on religious liberty. First, they came for the Catholics. Who's next?

This weekend, Catholic bishops informed parishioners of the recent White House edict forcing religious hospitals, schools, charities and other health and social service providers to provide "free" abortifacient pills, sterilizations and contraception on demand in their insurance plans — even if it violates their moral consciences and the teachings of their churches.

NARAL, NOW, Ms. Magazine and the Feminist Majority Foundation all cheered the administration's abuse of the Obamacare law to ram abortion down pro-life medical professionals' throats. Femme dinosaur Eleanor Smeal gloated over the news that the administration had rejected church officials' pleas for compromises: "At last," she exulted, the left's goal of "no-cost birth control" for all had been achieved.

As always, tolerance is a one-way street in the Age of Obama. "Choice" is in the eye (and iron fist) of the First Amendment usurper.

Like the rising number of states who have revolted against the individual health care mandate at the ballot box and in the courts, targeted Catholics have risen up against the Obamacare regime. Arlington (Va.) Bishop Paul Loverde didn't mince words, calling the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services order "a direct attack against religious liberty. This ill-considered policy comprises a truly radical break with the liberties that have underpinned our nation since its founding." Several bishops vowed publicly to fight the mandate.

Bishop Alexander Sample of Marquette, Mich., asserted plainly: "We cannot — we will not — comply with this unjust law."

It's not just rabid right-wing politicos defying the Obama machine. Pro-life Democratic Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania denounced the "wrong decision." Left-leaning Bishop Robert Lynch threatened "civil disobedience" in St. Petersburg, Fla., over the power grab. Lefty Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne wrote that Obama "botched" the controversy and "threw his progressive Catholic allies under the bus" by refusing to "balance the competing liberty interests here."

White House press secretary Jay Carney blithely denied on Tuesday that "there are any constitutional rights issues" involved in the brewing battle. Yet, the Shut Up and Hand Out Abortion Pills order undermines a unanimous Supreme Court ruling issued just last week upholding a religious employer's right to determine whom to hire and fire. And two private colleges have filed federal suits against the government to overturn the unconstitutional abortion coverage decree.

Hannah Smith, senior counsel at the nonprofit law firm The Becket Fund, which is representing the schools, boiled it down for Bloomberg News: "This is not really about access to contraception. The mandate is about forcing these religious groups to pay for it against their beliefs."

How did we get here? The first salvo came in December 2010, when the American Civil Liberties Union pushed HHS and its Planned Parenthood-championing secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, to force Catholic hospitals to perform abortions in violation of their core moral commitment to protecting the lives of the unborn.

The ACLU called for a litigious fishing expedition against Catholic hospitals nationwide that refuse to provide "emergency" contraception and abortions to women. In their sights: Devout Phoenix Catholic Bishop Thomas Olmsted, who revoked the Catholic status of a rogue hospital that performed several direct abortions, provided birth control pills and presided over sterilizations against the church's ethical and religious directives for health care.

The ACLU and the feminists have joined with Obama to threaten and sabotage the First Amendment rights of religious-based health care entities. The agenda is not increased "access" to health care services. The ultimate goal is to shut down health care providers — Catholic health care institutions employ about 540,000 full-time workers and 240,000 part-time workers — whose religious views cannot be tolerated by secular zealots and radical social engineers.

Is it any surprise their counterparts in the "Occupy" movement have moved from protesting "Wall Street" to harassing pro-life marchers in Washington, D.C., and hurling condoms at Catholic school girls in Rhode Island? Birds of a lawless, bigoted feather bully together.

Michelle Malkin is the author of "Culture of Corruption: Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks & Cronies" (Regnery 2010). Her e-mail address is malkinblog@gmail.com.

On their Wednesday morning shows, the Big Three networks continued their trend of all but ignoring the Obama administration trying to force religious institutions to include coverage of sterilization, abortion-inducing drugs, and contraceptives in their health care policies without a co-pay. The new mandate from the Department of Health and Human Services would force Catholic hospitals and schools to decide whether to submit to the new policy or follow the Church's teachings against birth control.

Instead of covering this growing dispute between the Catholic hierarchy of the United States and the federal government, CBS This Morning brought on Rev. Edward Beck, a Catholic priest, to respond to a story that might cast the Church in a bad light with regards to how it manages the donations it receives.

Anchors Erica Hill and Charlie Rose turned to Father Beck, their religious and faith contributor, after airing a report from correspondent Michelle Miller on how Anita Collins is accused of stealing $1 million from the Archdiocese of New York's fund for its schools. Rose first asked the priest, somewhat bizarrely, "How could she think she could get away with it; and…is the Church going to be…a forgiving church in the great Christian tradition?" Hill followed up by asking, "You mentioned the responsibility, too, that the Church has with this money the donors give to it. Is the Church too trusting?"

Neither CBS on-air personality raised the HHS mandate issue with their guest. However, somewhat to their credit, their program was the only morning or evening news show on the Big Three networks that has mentioned the controversy over the past 12 days since it began. Two days earlier, on January 30, Rose devoted a news brief to "a headline in USA Today says Catholics blast federal birth control mandate….The Obama administration says large religious institutions will have to include birth control in their employees' health care plans."

The full transcript of Erica Hill and Charlie Rose's segment with Father Edward Beck, which began 32 minutes into the 7 am Eastern hour of Wednesday's CBS This Morning:

CHARLIE ROSE: Faith and religion contributor Father Edward Beck is with us now. Good morning.

FATHER EDWARD BECK, CBS THIS MORNING RELIGIOUS & FAITH CONTRIBUTOR: Good morning-

[CBS News Graphic: "Of Faith And Fraud: Clerk Charged With $1M Theft From Archdiocese"]

ROSE: As you were watching this, you said, 'unbelievable.' I have only two questions: number one, how could she think she could get away with it; and number two, is the Church going to be forgiving about this- a forgiving church in the great Christian tradition?

BECK: Well, you know what, Charlie? The Church is forgiving- it's part of the Gospel- but forgiving doesn't mean you excuse this kind of behavior. I mean, this woman stole from the institution, but also its donors. You have to realize that people give money to the Church for certain ministries that the Church carries out. So they have an obligation to be good stewards of that money. This woman stole from an institution, namely, the education fund, where Catholic schools in this archdiocese were closing and she knew that. So you can forgive, but that doesn't mean she doesn't have to do penance- she doesn't have to be prosecuted- and justice has to be wrought.

ERICA HILL: You mentioned the responsibility, too, that the Church has with this money the donors give to it. Is the Church too trusting?

BECK: Well, sometimes, I think the Church is too trusting and a little naive. I'll give you an example. I was giving a retreat in Florida, and I was in the rectory- and this wasn't a parish that I was associated with- and I happened to open a door and I look in and there is a woman with a mound of money on a table. And she just looked up and she was, you know, fine about it, and I closed the door. And I went to the pastor and I said, you know, what was that? And he said ,well, she's counting the collection from Sunday. I said, alone in a room counting all of that money? I mean, any accountant will tell you, two people in a room- don't do that even to the worker. So, I mean, that is very naive, and I think now, when something like this happens, the Church says, ah, what are our fiscal controls? What do we need to do to get our house in order?

HILL: So you're saying that will change?

BECK: It already has changed-

HILL: Now, they do background checks, but still moving forward?

BECK:  There is now background checks that need to be done. And I think, as far as the archdiocese, what we're seeing is- yeah, they have those controls now in place, and there'll be more controls in place.

HILL: Nice to see this morning, Father. Thank you.

BECK: Thank you-

ROSE: Thanks.

The media may be busy trying to reelect Barack Obama, but it's never too early for them to start grooming the 2016 field. Look no further than the Washington Post, for example.

"O'Malley to set ambitious agenda," read the teaser headline posted this morning at the  Post's website. "Watch the Maryland governor deliver his sixth State of the State address now," read the caption beneath a photo showing Democratic Gov. Martin O'Malley in front of two American flags. A few hours later, following the speech, an updated teaser headline reading "Gov. O'Malley calls for 'tough choices'" takes readers to an article about O'Malley's February 1 speech in which the Democratic Governors Association (DGA) chief "urged Maryland lawmakers to act on gay marriage, tax hikes."

"Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) on Wednesday called on Maryland lawmakers to make a series of 'tough choices,' including voting for several tax increases, that he argued are needed to maintain the state’s top-ranked schools, build its transportation infrastructure and address other priorities," Post staffers John Wagner and Aaron C. Davis began their 11-paragraph recap.

Wagner and Davis relegated the Republican opposition to two sentences in paragraph 6 but quoted seven sentences from O'Malley, allowing him to close out the article with the closing lines of his speech to a state legislature dominated by fellow Democrats:

Wednesday’s speech was an opportunity to make his case for those initiatives individually and collectively to a captive audience of lawmakers and assorted dignitaries.

“May the choices we make on behalf of the people of Maryland — the choices for job creation, the choices for human dignity, the choices for a better future — be the right choices for the generations counting on ours,” the governor said at the close of his speech.

What's more, O'Malley finds not only gauzy coverage in the news pages but solid political coverage by the paper's editorial board. In an editorial in today's paper, the Post approved of Gov. O'Malley's tax hike push in "Maryland steps on the gas"*:

Rather than hiking the flat per-gallon charge, the governor urged a phased-in sales tax, rising to 6 percent by 2016, the same rate charged for goods. If gas prices stay where they are, the governor’s legislation would add about 21 cents a gallon by 2015.

It’s easy to predict that the idea will be unpopular. A poll published last weekend in The Post found about three-quarters of Marylanders opposed to higher taxes for gasoline. And the governor’s strategy (if there is one) of rolling out a gas tax a couple of weeks after proposing new taxes on income, water usage, cigars and Internet sales hardly seems like a recipe for legislative success.

Still, by aiming high — the 6 percent sales tax on gas would yield $615 million annually, more than the increase urged by the commission — Mr. O’Malley may be giving Democratic lawmakers cover to settle for a lesser amount. It is critical that he fight hard for what he has rightly identified as a critically underfunded area.

By contrast, I've not found any coverage by the Washington Post of conservative Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell's January 11 State of the Commonwealth speech, although the Post did print an article in the January 11 paper about how Gov. McDonnell (R) urged legislators of both parties to get along. And of course, the Post editorial board often chastises McDonnell — whose national profile is enhanced by his chairmanship of the Republican Governors Association — for his staunch line against raising taxes to fund northern Virginia transportation projects.

O'Malley and McDonnell are both considered potential contenders for their perspective parties' 2016 nominations, but it's clear the Post is intent on puffing the profile of the liberal chief executive of the Old Line State rather than the solid conservative from the Old Dominion.

*headlined as "Maryland needs a gas-tax hike to fund transportation needs" in the online version.

<<Like this post? Help us take on media bias by donating to NewsBusters (there's also a PayPal option on that page). Without the support of our readers, NewsBusters would not be possible.>> 

Mitt Romney can’t win for losing. Wednesday’s New York Times “news analysis” by Michael Barbaro and Ashley Parker posed as concerned over the “heavy new baggage” the Romney campaign had acquired by successfully going negative against Newt Gingrich in his Florida primary victory Tuesday night: “A Nasty Fight Carries Risks for the Winner.” Of course it does.

With his resounding victory over Newt Gingrich in Florida on Tuesday, Mitt Romney showed a worried Republican base a side of himself that it has both longed for and feared that he lacked: the agile political street fighter, willing to mock, scold and ultimately eviscerate his opponent.

But if he has quelled doubts about his toughness, he also emerges from the Florida free-for-all and the three contests that preceded it carrying heavy new baggage.

Mr. Romney was savaged by Mr. Gingrich over his record at Bain Capital, softening him up for the coming Democratic effort to portray him as a heartless capitalist happy to fire people to enrich himself. His release of his tax returns, complete with details about a Swiss bank account, provided new facts for opponents seeking to cast him as out of touch with ordinary Americans.

And the very trait that propelled him in Florida — a willingness to descend into the muck and run a relentlessly negative campaign — distracted from his economic-themed argument against Mr. Obama while deepening his rift with some populist conservatives. Should Mr. Gingrich remain a viable enough candidate to stay in the race through the summer, as he vowed on Tuesday, Mr. Romney could be forced to maintain an angry edge that could undermine his appeal among moderate and independent voters — groups whose views of him, polls suggest, appear to have been harmed by the Florida melee.

….
Mr. Romney has never been especially squeamish about negative campaigning. As jarring as his tone has seemed over the past 10 days, he has a long history of resorting to such tactics. (The exception was 2008, when Mr. Romney bowed out relatively early in the primary season.)

During his 2002 campaign for governor of Massachusetts, Mr. Romney ran biting commercials that portrayed his Democratic rival, the state treasurer Shannon O’Brien, as a basset hound asleep on the job as men walked off with bags of money. His poll numbers soon surged, and he pulled out an unexpected victory.

“He has learned along the way that this stuff works pretty well,” said Ms. O’Brien, who called the ads inaccurate and unfair.

Even as they employ hostile and loaded language against Romney's "negative campaigning," Times reporters surely realize such things go in both directions. Romney himself was the victim of harsh attacks on his religion by Sen. Ted Kennedy when they faced off in the 1994 Senate race in Massachusetts, as the Times documented: “Mr. Kennedy said in response to a reporter's question that Mr. Romney should be asked about his stand on the Mormon church's racially exclusive policies of the past.”