From ABCNews.com reported moments ago:

President Obama has selected Solicitor General Elena Kagan as his second nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court, according to the Associated Press.

If her nomination is approved by the Senate, Kagen would fill the seat left open by the retirement of Justice John Paul Stevens and become the fourth woman ever to sit on the nation’s highest court.

Kagan is considered one of the finest legal scholars in the country, dazzling both fellow liberal and conservative friends with her intellectual and analytical prowess but also her ability to find consensus among ideological opposites.

Kagan serves as the solicitor general arguing the administration’s position at the Supreme Court, as well as supervising the handling of litigation in federal appellate courts.

Read the entire piece for more of her background.

href="http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Supreme_Court/elena-kagan-president-obama-supreme-court-nominee/story?id=7541402">

On Friday, in the course of a general complaint about the relative lack of coverage of the flooding in Nashville and much of Tennessee, the Associated Press received a deserved compliment for its coverage from Investors Business Daily, which correctly implied that AP can’t make its subscribers publish its output.

But IBD missed one item, and understandably so. On Wednesday, the AP ran an article whose purpose seemed to be either to arouse class envy at a time when people should be pulling together, or to criticize the state and federal relief effort’s priorities. That article is no longer present at AP’s main web site. Why?

The item can still be found in about 150 places as of 11 p.m. Eastern time. (That may seem like a lot, but in context it isn’t.) Once you see the tenor and tone of the coverage, you’ll understand why the wire service might have wanted to pretend it never published the coverage of reporters Sheila Burke and Travis Loller.

Unfortunately, since I didn’t do a screen grab, I’m not sure of the exact title AP used at its main site. But here are examples of headlines employed at subscribing sites, one of which is probably the one the AP’s main site also used:

• Dubuque Telegraph Herald — "Flood Swamps the Poor"
• Salt Lake Tribune and most others — "Flood recovery worries poorer victims in Nashville"
• WCBS in New York — "Poor Appear Harder Hit By Flooding In Tenn." (oddly, the window title is "Crews Search for Bodies and Waters Recede in Tennessee After Deadly Flooding"
• Dallas Morning News — "Residents feeling slighted in flooded north Nashville"
• Northwest Herald — "Victims feel alone in Nashville"
• St. Louis Post-Dispatch — "Flood response bypassed some"
• Deseret News — "Flood recovery worries less-affluent victims in Nashville"
• At several TV stations — "Nashville’s honky-tonks quieted by deadly flooding"
• About a dozen CBS-affiliated outlets (example here) reworked the headline that appears at Google to "Dozens Killed Across South After Severe Flash Flooding" without changing the underlying report. But when one visits the actual report, the title is "Poor Appear Harder Hit By Flooding In Tenn."
• The Washington Examiner reworked the headline, which is consistent between Google News and the Examiner’s web site, to "Nashville’s famed music quieted by flooding."

Here are key paragraphs from the longer version of Burke’s and Loller’s report (bolds are mine):

Raging torrents had shot furniture through walls and pushed houses into the street near Nashville’s historically black Fisk and Tennessee State universities. Only a few tents tops poked above the floodwaters on Wednesday where dozens of homeless once lived along the still-swollen banks of the Cumberland River.

As the city’s vibrant country music scene gets the attention, less affluent victims wondered Wednesday how they will recover from the deadly floods.

"Being a minority we’re the last on the list. That’s just the way it is," said Troy Meneese, a 47-year-old custodian, as he aired out water-logged shoes, a couch and chairs in his yard in front of his brick one-story home in north Nashville.

… The flooding caused by record-breaking rains of more than 13 inches in two days sent water rushing through hundreds of homes, forcing thousands to evacuate — some by boat and canoe — affecting both rich and poor in this metropolitan area of about 1 million.

In Meneese’s neighborhood, some residents and community members said they felt neglected, especially compared to the attention they believed country music attractions and more affluent neighborhoods were receiving.

… Police conducted house-to-house searches in some parts of north Nashville on Wednesday, but some wondered if they should have come earlier.

"Search and rescue teams seem like they just got here. It’s a little late," said Howard Jones, 47, a pastor who came to the area to see if he could help. He said the neighborhood was particularly vulnerable because many elderly residents lived there.

… Nashville’s mayor and other officials visited a relief center in the north Nashville where food, water, tetanus shots and recovery information are available. The mayor, who has identified the area as one of the hardest hit, said it was important for officials to be on the scene checking on the response effort.

Searches on key word strings in the article at AP’s main web site (all without quotes) comes up empty ("Raging Torrents"), empty ("As Nashville’s Cumberland River continued to recede Wednesday"), and empty ("some residents and community members said they felt neglected").

There seem to be only two plausible possibilities as to why the article has disappeared at AP’s main site, neither of them complimentary:

• The better explanation would be that the wire service was embarrassed by the bitter comments it reported. It’s perfectly understandable that people who have just lost everything might lash out and say things they would never ordinarily say; it’s another thing to opportunistically report them to create more generalized resentment and anger. But such reporting should never have occurred in the first place, and as noted in the list above, AP can’t just close Pandora’s box and pretend it never happened.
• The worse explanation would be that comments such as those reported bear an eerie resemblance to some of the understandable but overheated rhetoric that came out of New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The anger quickly got directed a President George W. Bush, even though local and state authorities were primarily responsible for poor preparedness and early lack of response. Perhaps AP higher-ups saw some potential for blowback into the Obama administration, and put the kibosh on Burke’s and Loller’s work to minimize that possibility.

Neither explanation is acceptable. What AP published is part of the historical record (the "first draft of history," if you will), and should stay out there. The wire service has no good justification for trying to make it disappear.

Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.

New York Times columnist Charles "Minstrel Show" Blow was at it again Saturday accusing Tea Partiers of being racists.

I guess for Blow, a day without calling some conservative a racist is like a day without sunshine.

Whatever the pathology, his "Trying to Outrun Race" made it crystal clear right from the get go what unfortunate readers were in store for:

Racist. Tea Party. 

Not surprisingly, it was all downhill from there (h/t Hot Air headlines):

The Tea Party is a Frankenstein movement – an odd collection of factions, loosely stitched together, where the head, to the extent that it exists, fails to control the body.

It has attracted hordes of the disaffected with differing interests, including some who’ve openly expressed their dark racial prejudices and others who polls suggest harbor more subtle and less visible biases. Opposition to President Obama triggers a political Pavlovian response among some of these people, and they want to ally themselves with others around a common enemy. 

Also by no means surprising, Blow cited poll numbers to support his position: 

However, widely cited polling, like the multistate University of Washington survey released last month, has found that large swaths among those who show strong support for the Tea Party also hold the most extreme views on a range of racial issues. The fringe theory is a farce. 

Ah yes, UW’s WISER poll the media so adored last month.

As Cathy Young wrote on April 25, the data the press jumped for joy over conflicted with numbers that mysteriously went unpublished:

The lead investigator, political science professor Christopher Parker, graciously provided me with the fuller data — which strongly contradict the notion of the Tea Parties as a unique hotbed of racism.

Thus, while only 35% of strong Tea Party supporters rated blacks as hardworking, only 49% described whites as such. While the gap is evident, these responses are close to those for all whites (blacks are rated as "hardworking" by 40%, whites by 52%). While whites who are strongly anti-Tea Party seem free of bias on this item — blacks and whites are rated as "hardworking" by 55% and 56%, respectively – this is not true for intelligence and trustworthiness. Whites in every group are less likely to rate blacks than whites as "intelligent" by similar margins: 14 points for Tea Party supporters (45% vs. 59%), 13 points for all whites (49% vs. 62%), 10 points for Tea Party opponents (59% vs. 69%). On "trustworthy," the gap is smaller in the pro-Tea Party group (41% vs. 49%) than in the anti-Tea Party group (57% vs. 72%). One could write headlines about the "racial paranoia" of white liberals who consider blacks less trustworthy than whites!

Fascinating. I wonder what Blow would say about that. But I digress: 

The endurance of racial stereotypes in this day and age is disturbing; but Tea Party supporters differ little in this regard from mainstream Americans. (It is also worth noting that, as in many other surveys, Asian-Americans in the UW poll are rated much more positively than whites.)

Compared to middle-of-the-road whites, Tea Party supporters show far more agreement with the statement that blacks should work their way up "without special favors" the way other minorities such as Italians and Jews did, or that blacks would be as well off as whites if they worked harder. The standard left-of-center view, shared by the UW researchers, is that such attitudes represent a subtler form of racism, or "racial resentment." In some cases, that is surely true. Yet these sentiments may also reflect a genuinely race-neutral belief in self-reliance and self-help — or the view, shared by many black commentators, that the black community’s problems are partly rooted in damaging behavioral and cultural patterns.

So, if you believe that blacks should work their way up "without special favors," or that they’d be just as well off as whites if they worked harder, according to the poll Blow cited, you’re a racist. 

Any wonder why this survey concluded Tea Partiers are racists?

But it goes deeper than this, for as NewsBusters reported two days later, the political science professor behind this poll has a history of finding racism where and whenever he wants:

Parker was involved in in 2008. Back then, Parker accused Republicans of "thinly veiled allusions to Obama’s race" and insisted that "race was a consistent narrative used by Obama’s opponents."

What did Parker and his colleagues cite as examples of this? Code words, of course:

We begin this article by proposing that although Obama ultimately won, we cannot reject that race-and in particular racism-played a significant role in the outcome. During the campaign, race was a consistent narrative used by Obama’s opponents. His primary opponents, particularly Hillary Clinton, and Republicans in the general election used racial references to attack the Illinois senator, citing him for his perceived inability to connect to "real working Americans" ~Bazinet and McAuliff, 2008; Canellos 2008; MacGillis 2008. A Republican in Georgia used the term uppity to describe Obama, a clear racial reference ~Los Angeles Times 2008. Even the infamous "Joe the Plumber" charged Obama with seeking to redistribute wealth, raising age-old stereotypes of African Americans as radical, welfare dependent, and not as hardworking as the White working class. In short, he accused Obama of seeking to take money from hardworking "real Americans" to give it to "those people" ~Rohter 2008.

So you see, calling someone uppity is a "clear" racial slur. Saying that someone doesn’t understand "real working Americans" is some kind of code for saying they don’t understand white people. Oh, and calling attention to President Obama’s own self-proclaimed plan of wealth distribution means you think black people are lazy.

With such a lax definition of racism, it’s no wonder Parker sees it everywhere.

Indeed, and the same can be applied to Blow.

In the end, just as there are people who have racist views, there are also folks who see racism in all human behavior.

Consider that Blow a few weeks ago referred to the tax day Tea Party in Dallas as "a political minstrel show devised for the entertainment of those on the rim of obliviousness and for those engaged in the subterfuge of intolerance."

In reality, it is Blow that is clearly oblivious and intolerant.

Unfortunately for us, he has a column at the New York Times to express his undeserving hatred for all those he disagrees with, which would be far more acceptable if he’d try to stick to the facts AND leave race out of it.

Or is that asking too much? 

Washington Post health care reporter Ceci Connolly appeared on PBS’s Tavis Smiley show on Wednesday, plugging the Post’s new account of the battle, titled "Landmark" — and suggesting the media was scatter-brained, and really needed President Obama to reel the country back in:  

But when it came to the proposed solutions that’s where it started getting complicated, and the White House, if you especially think back, Tavis, to last summer, just about a year or so now, a year ago, June, July and into that really rough August of ‘09 period, that’s when the White House lost control of the message.

Part of the reason that it did was they let reporters like me write endlessly about the inside-Congress — really minutia – tedious process kind of story, and it took President Obama coming back and reengaging in September of ‘09 with that joint address to Congress which was really a speech to the whole nation to kind of get it back on track a little bit.

Then, of course, fast-forward to this January, when again, it took the president and his own articulate message to really get it back on track.

Does Connolly realize how much she’s bowing like a courtier? "Oh, Mr. President, we are such flibbertigibbets. We are so grateful you can cut through our clutter with your charisma!"

Her account seems to ignore the conservative forces that were "derailing" or delaying Obama’s agenda. She was also impressed by his lack of cynicism — or stubborn naivete, or overconfidence in his charisma — that he thought he would get bipartisan support:                         

SMILEY: You and your colleagues, Ceci, argue in this book that the president was the only one in Washington who thought that this bill really was going to be passed with bipartisan support.

CONNOLLY: Yes, it’s an interesting trait about President Obama, and I’m sure you’ve watched this in him over the years as well. He doesn’t like partisanship, and I think that he genuinely believes in his ability to convince people, often on the merits of whatever case he might be arguing, because he is very smart and he is very articulate, and he thought that that’s what he was going to do on this issue.

Now, many people will suggest it was naVve of him to expect that at all, and certainly very late in the game, but he held out hope that Senator Olympia Snowe from Maine, maybe Chuck Grassley from Iowa, Susan Collins, also from Maine, all Republicans who he courted for a good length of time, but in the end he could not get the vote of a single one of them.

Then Smiley and Connolly concluded by awarding medals to the biggest liberal winners:

SMILEY: I know if any of these three persons, finally, were on this program tonight and I would ask this question, I can tell you what their answer might be, but let me ask you. Who’s the biggest winner here – Obama, Pelosi, Reid – and I’m asking inside the Beltway, because I know they would say the American people are the big winners here. But inside the Beltway, who’s the big winner here, now that this thing has passed?

CONNOLLY: Well, I guess I’m going to call it a draw between Pelosi and Obama for somewhat different reasons, but Pelosi achieved what no Speaker of the House has been able to achieve; Obama, the same goes for, like so many presidents who tried before.

I think in the case of Obama, what it did inside the Beltway was it made people realize he’s a big tougher and he is more perseverance and more patience than maybe people expected, and he was able to pull this off.

For Pelosi, just sheer force of her ability to marshal the troops in the House, not once, but twice. That was, politically speaking, no matter how you feel about the actual contents of the bill, politically speaking it was an amazing achievement for her.

Conservative author Ann Coulter on Friday in one sentence perfectly summed up the media’s reaction to the identity of the man that caused a state of panic in New York’s Times Square last weekend: "They’re working through their grief of the car bomber not being a Tea Partier."

Such was marvelously said on Fox News’s "O’Reilly Factor."

After playing video of a CBS Evening News segment covered by NewsBusters Thursday, the host said to his guest, "They’re doing it. They’re not saying this is a mad man, he should be hung. These Islamic jihadists are threatening our lives. They’re not saying that, they being the mainstream media in general."

That was the only invitation required for Coulter to say what dearly needed to be said about how the press have behaved since the Times Square bomber was arrested (video follows with partial transcript and commentary): 

BILL O’REILLY: "Impact segment" tonight, as we reported early this week, some media outlets have shown sympathy to Faisal Shahzad, the man accused of trying to set off a car bomb in Times Square. To be fair, some of the reports are simply giving the man’s background. He was not prospering as a new American citizen.

But CBS correspondent Bob Orr has raised some ire over the past two nights with his point of view.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BOB ORR: He became a U.S. citizen just a year ago, but he has not realized any American dream. He quit his job, lost his house, and was separated from his family. Sources tell CBS he defaulted on both his mortgage and another $65,000 equity loan. And video taken just after the FBI raid of Shahzad’s Connecticut apartment shows the 30-year-old Pakistani American man lived a Spartan and seemingly lonely existence.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O’REILLY: Well, Mr. Orr did not mention that Shahzad had taken 13 trips to Pakistan. Well, that might put a crimp in anyone’s wallet. Would it not?

With us now to analyze, Ann Coulter, who’s book "Guilty" is out in paperback.

You see, this is — there’s no question they’re doing it. Okay, we have it on tape.

ANN COULTER: Yes.

O’REILLY: They’re doing it. They’re not saying this is a mad man, he should be hung. These Islamic jihadists are threatening our lives. They’re not saying that, they being the mainstream media in general.

But Mr. Orr goes out of his way to say, hey, you know, this guy had a hard life and he was down on his luck. And then doesn’t mention 13 trips to Pakistan. It is not cheap to get to Pakistan. Maybe if he only took two, he could have paid his mortgage.

(LAUGHTER)

COULTER: Yes, which apparently he was very upset about that being foreclosed on.

Well, you have to understand, Bill, they’re working through their grief of the car bomber not being a Tea Partier, which the mainstream media was so rooting for if they could find a right winger within 1,000 mile of the Tea Party.

O’REILLY: I think that’s true to a large extent. But even if that’s true–

COULTER: But the funniest thing–

O’REILLY: –even if that’s true, even if they wanted it to be another militia-type situation when you have the fact that this guy is an Islamic extremist.

COULTER: Yes. Yes.

O’REILLY: Why are you still trying to make him sympathetic? For what reason?

COULTER: Right. Right. And he had a wife and a child, who was very upsetting and foreclosed on. But the funny thing about these sympathetic portrayals we’re getting in the media is the more and more they describe him as, you know, completely normal and was buying into the American way of life, they are unintentionally leaving us with one conclusion.

So the one thing that sets him apart from the rest of us, oh, he was a Muslim. That’s not the answer they want. They spent all this time saying it’s not Islam, it’s not Islam, it’s poverty.

Well, apparently, it’s not poverty. Apparently it’s not being able to live in the U.S. They don’t realize what direction they’re pushing this whole discussion. And okay, the one thing that sets him apart, and sets the Army doctor apart, and sets the subway bomber apart, and the diaper bomber apart, what do they have in common? One’s a doctor, one’s being foreclosed on, one’s living abroad, and one just became a citizen last year. They’re all Muslims.

O’REILLY: Okay, but it’s obvious. All right, what isn’t obvious to me–

COULTER: It isn’t obvious to the mainstream media because they had no idea what they’re doing.

O’REILLY: Well, but I don’t know why a journalist would want to make a guy like this sympathetic. I mean, if the bomb had gone off, innocent women and children, men, women, and children would have been killed.

COULTER: Right.

O’REILLY: People have no attachment to any kind of political thing would have been killed.

COULTER: Right.

O’REILLY: Muslims probably would have been killed.

COULTER: Right.

O’REILLY: All right? So why are you going out of your way to say he didn’t realize the American dream, he got foreclosed on. He only had three shirts in his closet.

COULTER: Right.

O’REILLY: For what reason?

COULTER: Well, you always bring the mainstream media crazy portrayals of, you know, whomever. A late term abortionist, the Muslim terrorist, criminals because you should read "Treason." It’s all in that massive bestseller of mine because liberals always — they have instinct to root for barbarians against civilization. They always do it. Why did they take the side of the Soviet Union for 20 years?

O’REILLY: Is it because they feel that America has brought terrorism on itself by not giving Faisal a free home or more coats? Is that why? That we’re bad because Faisal couldn’t make it in Bridgeport, Connecticut?

COULTER: No, I think you’re being too specific about this. You pick the barbarian–

O’REILLY: Yes.

COULTER: –from Ted bundy to Faisal. Liberals will somehow come up–

O’REILLY: Well, Bundy, though, I didn’t see much reportage sympathizing with him.

COULTER: Oh, sure there was.

O’REILLY: But on this end–

COULTER: No, not only was there–

O’Reilly offered as exhibit "B" what NewsBusters reported Tuesday: 

O’REILLY: Did you see the Contessa Brewer sound bite from NBC?

COULTER: Oh, please replay. Yes, I’ve seen it a hundred times, but I’d like to see it–

O’REILLY: I don’t want to play it again. No, I don’t want to see it again, but this woman was profoundly disappointed that it was a Muslim terrorist. And I’m going, all right. Why?

Now if she had said because I respect the Islamic religion and the Arab culture, and I don’t want it run down anymore, I could have understood that. I mean, maybe Ms. Brewer respects the culture.

COULTER: But you know what culture they don’t respect? They don’t respect Christian culture.

O’REILLY: Well–

COULTER: They don’t respect American culture.

Is Coulter right? Is the media’s reaction to the identity of the bomber a disrespect for American culture, or is there something else responsible?

For instance, mightn’t this just be a political calculus on the part of most press members, i.e. what’s in the best interest of the President and his Party?

To be sure, there hasn’t been a lot of joy in Media Muddville lately with Obama plummeting in the polls and Republicans looking to pick up a large number of Congressional seats in less than six months.

As a result, the dream of a longterm liberal control of government might very well be slipping away.

As this is now the third attempted Islamic extremist attack on our homeland since Obama was inaugurated — fortunately only Ft. Hood was "successful" — the press have to realize that this is not an issue helping Democrats right now.

As we saw in the 2002 midterm elections, a fearful nation trusts Republicans more with national security. 

As such, isn’t it possible that anything significant that happens between now and Election Day the Obama-loving media are going to immediately analyze and respond to it exclusively from a "What does this do to the Democrat chances in November" perspective?

Mightn’t it be as simple as that, or is there really something much more culturally and religiously biased at play as Coulter suggests? 

One of the worst ways that the lack of ideological diversity in America’s newsrooms shows forth is in the media’s treatment of sensational accusations against the current president.

Oftentimes, explosive allegations against presidents are either untrue or drastically overstated: George W. Bush deliberately lying to get the U.S. to war so he can cash in or deliberately ignoring Hurricaine Katrina due to his hatred of black people (a la Kanye West), Bill Clinton’s supposed involvment in the drug trade, so on and so forth.

Journalists do the public a service by rebutting absurd conspiracy theories and wacko charges. In recent memory, though, they have taken a much greater zeal toward stamping out allegations against Democrats, particularly President Obama, a stark contrast to the kidglove or even promotional attitude they took toward books by liberal authors alleging all sorts of anti-Bush absurdities.

World Net Daily-affiliated author Aaron Klein recently discovered this when he sent his new book, "The Manchurian President," to members of the media he hoped would review it. He got some very angry responses. Here are some of the more colorful ones:

"Never, ever contact me again," wrote Time Magazine senior writer Jeffrey Kluger.

Newsweek deputy editor Rana Foroohar quipped,"This is sensational rubbish that is of no interest to any legitimate publication."

"Absolute crap," replied Evelyn Leopold, a Huffington Post contributor who served for 17 years as U.N. bureau chief for Reuters until recently.

Nancy Gibbs, editor-at-large for Newsweek, fired, "Remove me from your list."

David Knowles, AOL’s political writer, responded, "seriously, get a life."

Ben Wyskida, publicity director for The Nation, claimed Klein’s book is "so offensive" and "so far afield."

Say what you will about this book’s claims — its sub-header claims to expose "Barack Obama’s Ties to Communists, Socialists and Other Anti-American Extremists" — but some of these reporters’ publications had no such qualms reviewing, and occasionally endorsing, the far-left’s radical anti-Bush claims during the last administration, even when they were backed by unreliable sources, or by no sources at all.

The Nation and the Huffington Post were perhaps more predictably hypocritical. Both jumped at the opportunity to bash the Bush administration for supposed misdeeds, even when the facts supporting those claims were sketchy at best.

Take Seymour Hersh’s infamous 2007 New Yorker column, "The Redirection," which claimed that the United States was funneling money to terrorist groups. The story’s most inflammatory charges were based on hearsay: Hersh heard it from another journalist, who had heard it from the founder of a decidedly anti-Bush organization, who had heard it "from all kinds of people."

Both HuffPo and the Nation touted Hersh’s claims as fact, despite the exceptionally weak sourcing that undergirded his most damning claims.

Huffington Post contributor Scott Thill wrote that Hersh’s column "is a f**king doozy, and not just because it boasts research deeper than Wikipedia."

"Hersh," Thill continued, "has uncovered how the Bush administration’s strategic shifting in Iraq has betrayed both its motivations for invading the country, and how dependent they are on the economic influence of Saudi Arabia." He regurgitated a few more left-wing talking points about Bush and the Iraq war, and concluded that "support for this war, for this president, for this administration, is an implicit rubber-stamp for the murder of our own."

The Nation also trumpeted Hersh’s dubious claims that the United States was indirectly funding terrorist groups as fact. Under the byline "The Nation," its website claimed the Bush administration was "running an updated version of Iran-Contra (without the CIA) out of the Vice President’s office."

The more traditional news outlets that condemned Klein’s book did not give such ringing endorsements to equally sketchy claims, but many of them came close, or at the very least reported on such misinformation rather than dismissing it outright.

Time Magazine, for instance, used J.H. Hatfield’s thoroughly-debunked book "Fortunate Son" to fact-check — and find factual — parts of Oliver Stone’s Bush-bashing movie "W". For those who don’t remember, "Fortunate Son" alleged that Bush had been arrested for cocaine possession and had his record expunged upon his father’s request. Publishers recalled most of the books when it became apparent that Hatfield had made up most of his claims.

Time also published a lengthy review of Kitty Kelley’s salacious book, "Nancy Reagan: The Unauthorized Biography". Kelley’s book, by Time’s own account, "is so slanted that its credibility is called into question at every turn. She uses a variety of techniques that would not pass muster with most reputable news organizations."

Yet despite this admission, Time touts elements of the book that are, it claims, accurate or revealing:

The book is exhaustively researched, packed with quotes (a surprising number of them with names attached), anecdotes and detail. To be sure, much of this is not new: Kelley mixes original quotes indiscriminately with recycled material from other books and articles, and fudges the notes at the end so the reader often cannot tell which is which. Still, much of the portrait — Nancy’s difficult relationship with her children, her obsessive attention to detail as a White House hostess — rings true. Treated simply as a compendium of all the scraps a team of diligent researchers could gather about Nancy Reagan, it serves at least one historical function. It reveals that many, many people didn’t like her.

If Time was willing to sift through the sea of shoddy journalistic practices that comprised much of the book to find the "historical function" it serves, could’t it have done the same with Klein’s book?

To its credit, Newsweek declined a review of another Kelley book, "The Family," saying the magazine was not "comfortable with a lot of the reporting." That book claimed that George Bush had done cocaine at Camp David, and arranged an illegal abortion for an ex-girlfriend. Still, Newsweek’s statement was a far cry from "sensational rubbish that is of no interest to any legitimate publication."

Taken together, these double standards reveal a liberal media paradigm that at least tolerates and discusses — and occasionally endorses in strong terms — unreliable and slanderous books that paint Republicans in less-than appealing terms, while rejecting out of hand any book that makes damning allegations about President Obama.

It seems that the U.S. News & World Report is in some serious competition with the Associated Press over who can put the most positive spin on April’s increase in unemployment. So the unemployment figure rose last month from 9.7% to 9.9%? Great news according to Rick Newman in his U.S. News blog titled, "Why a Rising Unemployment Rate is Good News." And why is it good news? Newman explains…sort of:

It sounds dreadful. After drifting down consistently since last fall, the unemployment rate has suddenly shot up again, from 9.7 percent in March to 9.9 percent in April. But don’t despair: A rising unemployment rate is actually one of the best signs yet that the economy is bouncing back.

The unemployment rate rose for the right reason. Instead of shedding jobs, employers added 290,000 jobs in April, the strongest showing since 2007. The reason the unemployment rate went up is that a lot more people are suddenly looking for work. The government said that the labor force swelled by 805,000 people in April. That’s more than three times the number of new jobs, so the proportion of people looking for a job but unable to find one went up. Still, that big increase in the labor force marks an important shift in sentiment among people on the fringes of the economy.

Huh? So does that mean that a fall in the unemployment rate would have been a bad thing? And if the unemployment rate continues to rise?  Also a good thing according to Newman:

Another 610,000 people entered the labor force without being technically unemployed, a sign that first-time workers and other job seekers have decided to get off the couch and start hustling. There are a lot more where they came from, which means the unemployment rate might still rise in future months, before it turns around and starts declining for good. For once, it will be something to cheer.

As could be expected, commenters posting to this U.S. News blog were a bit more than stunned at Newman’s reasoning:

This is the worst doublespeak I’ve ever seen. I think it would be good news if you became an unemployed journalist! You deserve to get fired for this crap.

When 120,000 temporary census jobs are part of the 290,000 jobs created in the economy this reporting cycle, and the U6 broader unemployment rate ticks up .2% to 17.1% total there is no good news. There is no "jobless recovery", that is the biggest oxymoron on the planet. 

Should you think this attitude was because it was just  a U.S. News blog, you would be wrong. The same attitude is echoed in a regular U.S. News & Report article by Liz Wolgemuth:

On the day following the U.S. stock market’s nearly 1,000 point intraday plunge, the Labor Department reported that employers added 290,000 jobs in April, the biggest monthly gain since March 2006. While it remains to be seen what effect it will have on investors who are focused on the sovereign-debt crisis in Europe,  this is good news for recession-weary job seekers. The unemployment rate jumped to 9.9 percent last month, from 9.7 percent in March, as hopeful workers flooded back into the job market to search for jobs.

And now Wolgemuth’s bizarre reasoning as to why workers are "hopeful" again despite the rise in unemployment:

Economists expected that the economy would add 180,000 jobs in April and the unemployment rate would remain at 9.7 percent. The higher unemployment rate may suggest that workers jumped back into the labor market faster than economists were expecting. It turns out that March hiring was much better than originally reported.

Huh? Wake me up when we finally leave the Bizarro World of U.S. News & World Report. Of course, the commenters posting to this article were somewhat less than impressed by the reasoning in which rising unemployment is a positive sign:

Who really authored this article? Rahm Emanuel?

Two years ago these same numbers would have had the writers claiming the end of the world. Gee- The last few days of stock performance sure show that investors think all is good! What a load! 

On Fox Chicago News Friday evening, reporter Tera Williams did a piece on Chicago’s gun buyback program scheduled for today.  The city gives prepaid credit cards for weapons turned in.  This year it’s paying $100 for each assault weapon, $75 for guns and $10 for BB guns, air guns and replica guns.
Williams questioned several residents on the effectiveness of the program.  One man told her (at about 1:47 of the video), "It’s a good way to start."  Williams replied: "Something’s better than nothing, right?" while nodding her head affirmatively.

Chicago’s been trying to do "something" about guns for years.  Since 1982, it’s outlawed hand guns.  The gun buyback scheme has run since 2006.  Yet, as of two weeks ago, homicides for the year hit 113 and two Democratic lawmakers recommended National Guard deployment to quell the violence.

The gun turn-in program is no more successful than the many "stop the violence" marches that gun-grabbing Chicago mayor Richard Daley and his police chief participate in.  In asserting that something’s better than nothing, reporter Williams revealed her own bias.    

Bill Maher on Friday said conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh is intentionally saying "f–ked up s–t" to compete with Fox News’s Glenn Beck

While making this preposterous assertion, the "Real Time host falsely claimed that Limbaugh accused the Times Square bomber, Faisal Shahzad, of having a Barack Obama bumper sticker on his SUV.

Much like other falsehoods spouted by the HBO host on the most recent installment of "Real Time," Maher seemed to be attacking all manner of conservatives in an attempt to save face after his humiliating encounter with ABC’s George Will last Sunday.

Feeling comfortable on his home turf without someone to challenge his inaccuracies, the comedian went into a vulgarity laden segment ridiculing the trifecta of Limbaugh, Beck, and former Alaska governor Sarah Palin (video follows with partial transcript and commentary, strong vulgarity warning):

BILL MAHER, HOST: So, Rush Limbaugh said on his show this week that, that the Times Square bomber had an Obama bumper sticker on his car, and that’s why the authorities towed it away so quickly. Not because it was a giant bomb. So, as usual, Rush is dead wrong, but we got a picture of the bomber’s car.  

Actually, that’s not exactly what Limbaugh said on Tuesday: 

RUSH LIMBAUGH: Guess what? Faisal Shahzad is a registered Democrat. I wonder if this SUV had an Obama sticker on it. Faisal Shahzad is a registered Democrat. The original New York Times headline on this was: "US Arrests SUV Owner In Times Square Case." They then changed it but that was their first headline: "US Arrests SUV Owner." Fine, so he’s a Democrat. I want to see the Obama sticker on his car. Notice how quickly they got it outta Times Square before anybody could hop and maybe see an "Obama 2012" bumper sticker on the damn car.  

As evidenced by the transcript, Limbaugh WONDERED if there was an Obama bumper sticker on the SUV and said someone would "MAYBE SEE" an "Obama 2012."

Wondering and saying "maybe" is far different than claiming something occurred, although clearly that’s NOT a distinction the typically inflammatory Maher would likely understand.

But the segment got worse, for Maher next showed fictitious bumper stickers found on Shahzad’s SUV — "I Love New York" with a bomb in place of the heart for example — concluding with "Palin 2012," which of course got huge laughs from the typically left-leaning "Real Time" audience.

Maher then continued:

MAHER: So, another thing that Rush Limbaugh said this week, here’s his quote, talking about the oil spill, "The ocean will take care of this on its own. It’s as natural," the oil he’s talking about, "as the ocean water is." That’s right, a petrochemical stew is very natural to wetlands. You know what, you dipshit, mercury is natural, too, you don’t put it in your Cheerios. And, I feel like, I feel like Rush Limbaugh as crazy as (?), is way more crazy, and I think the reason is Glenn Beck. Glenn Beck is getting all the press, and he raised the bar, and now Rush has to compete. So he’s saying even more fucked up shit.  

Here’s what Limbaugh actually said on April 29:

LIMBAUGH: Our official climatologist, Dr. Roy Spencer has just sent me something. I’ve been wondering about this. He must have been reading my mind. We’ve got 5,000 barrels a day being spilled from the rig, and Dr. Spencer looked into it. You know, we’ve talked of this before. There’s natural seepage into oceans all over the world from the ocean floor of oil — and the ocean’s pretty tough, it just eats it up. Dr. Spencer looked into this. You know the seepage from the floor of the Gulf is exactly 5,000 barrels a day, throughout the whole Gulf of Mexico now. It doesn’t seep out all in one giant blob like this thing has, but the bottom line here is: Even places that have been devastated by oil slicks like… What was that place up in Alaska where the guy was drunk, ran a boat aground? (interruption) Prince William Sound. They were wiping off the rocks with Dawn dishwater detergent and paper towels and so forth. The place is pristine now.

You do survive these things. I’m not advocating don’t care about it hitting the shore or coast and whatever you can do to keep it out of there is fine and dandy, but the ocean will take care of this on its own if it was left alone and was left out there. It’s natural. It’s as natural as the ocean water is. (interruption) Well, the turtles may take a hit for a while, but so what? So do we!

As such, the point Limbaugh was making with Spencer’s help was that we’ve had oil spills in the past, and the environment does indeed recover from them.

I personally have been to Santa Barbara many times since the 1969 oil spill there, and that beach is one of the most beautiful I’ve ever seen anywhere in the world.

In fact, it’s so gorgeous that Nobel Laureate Al Gore just bought a $9 million mansion overlooking the very place that spill occurred.

Of course, the really delicious irony in this segment was Maher claiming that the most popular talk radio host in the nation has to resort to saying "f–ed up s–t" to compete with anyone.

This seems doubly hypocritical since this comedian, as evidenced by the many falsehoods in this episode alone, has made a career out of saying — ahem — "f-ed up s–t!" 

Happy Mother’s Day!

The history of Mother’s Day is centuries old and the earliest Mother’s Day celebrations can be traced back to the spring celebrations of ancient Greece in honor of Rhea, the Mother of the Gods. During the 1600’s, the early Christians in England celebrated a day to honor Mary, the mother of Christ. By a religious order the holiday was later expanded in its scope to include all mothers, and named as the Mothering Sunday. Celebrated on the 4th Sunday of Lent (the 40 day period leading up to Easter), "Mothering Sunday" honored the mothers of England.

During this time many of the England’s poor worked as servants for the wealthy. As most jobs were located far from their homes, the servants would live at the houses of their employers. On Mothering Sunday, the servants would have the day off and were encouraged to return home and spend the day with their mothers. A special cake, called the mothering cake, was often brought along to provide a festive touch.

As Christianity spread throughout Europe the celebration changed to honor the "Mother Church" – the spiritual power that gave them life and protected them from harm. Over time the church festival blended with the Mothering Sunday celebration . People began honoring their mothers as well as the church.

With the passage of time, the practice of this fantastic tradition ceased slowly. The English colonists settled in America discontinued the tradition of Mothering Sunday because of lack of time.

In the United States, Mother’s Day was loosely inspired by the British day and was first suggested after the American Civil War by social activist Julia Ward Howe. Howe (who wrote the words to the Battle hymn of the Republic) was horrified by the carnage of the Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War and so, in 1870, she tried to issue a manifesto for peace at international peace conferences in London and Paris (it was much like the later Mother’s Day Peace Proclamation). During the Franco-Prussian war in the 1870s, Julia began a one-woman peace crusade and made an impassioned "appeal to womanhood" to rise against war. She composed in Boston a powerful plea that same year (generally considered to be the original Mothers’ Day proclamation*) translated it into several languages and distributed it widely. In 1872, she went to London to promote an international Woman’s Peace Congress. She began promoting the idea of a "Mother’s Day for Peace" to be celebrated on June 2, honoring peace, motherhood and womanhood. In the Boston Mass, she initiated a Mothers’ Peace Day observance on the second Sunday in June, a practice that was to be established as an annual event and practiced for at least 10 years. The day was, however, mainly intended as a call to unite women against war. It was due to her efforts that in 1873, women in 18 cities in America held a Mother’s Day for Pace gathering. Howe rigorously championed the cause of official celebration of Mothers Day and declaration of official holiday on the day. She held meetings every year at Boston on Mother’s Peace Day and took care that the day was well-observed. The celebrations died out when she turned her efforts to working for peace and women’s rights in other ways. Howe failed in her attempt to get the formal recognition of a Mother’s Day for Peace. Her remarkable contribution in the establishment of Mother’s Day, however, remains in the fact that she organized a Mother’s Day dedicated to peace. It is a landmark in the history of Mother’s Day in the sense that this was to be the precursor to the modern Mother’s Day celebrations. To acknowledge Howe’s achievements a stamp was issued in her honor in 1988.

It should be well to remember that Howe’s idea was influenced by Ann Marie Reeves Jarvis, a young Appalachian homemaker who, starting in 1858, had attempted to improve sanitation through what she called "Mothers Friendship Day". In the 1900’s, at a time when most women devoted their time solely on their family and homes, Jarvis was working to assist in the healing of the nation after the Civil War. She organized women throughout the Civil War to work for better sanitary conditions for both sides and in 1868 she began work to reconcile Union and Confederate neighbors. Ann was instrumental in saving thousands of lives by teaching women in her Mothers Friendship Clubs the basics of nursing and sanitation which she had learned from her famous physician brother James Reeves, M.D. In parts of the United States it was customary to plant tomatoes outdoors after Mother’s Work Days (and not before).

It was Jarvis’ daughter, Anna Jarvis, who finally succeeded in introducing Mother’s Day in the sense as we celebrate it today. Anna graduated from the Female Seminary in Wheeling and taught in Grafton for a while. Later she moved to Philadelphia with her family. Anna had spent many years looking after her ailing mother. This is why she preferred to remain a spinster. When her mother died in Philadelphia on May 9, 1905, Anna missed her greatly. So did her sister Elsinore whom she looked after as well. Anna felt children often neglected to appreciate their mother enough while the mother was still alive. Now, she intended to start a Mother’s Day, as an honoring of the mothers. In 1907, two years after her mother’s death, Anna Jarvis disclosed her intention to her friends who supported her cause wholeheartedly. So supported by her friends, Anna decided to dedicate her life to her mother’s cause and to establish Mother’s Day to "honor mothers, living and dead." She started the campaign to establish a national Mother’s Day. With her friends, she started a letter-writing campaign to urge ministers, businessmen and congressmen in declaring a national Mother’s Day holiday. She hoped Mother’s Day would increase respect for parents and strengthen family bonds.

As a result of her efforts the first mother’s day was observed on May 10, 1908, by a church service honoring Late Mrs. Reese Jarvis, in the Andrews Methodist Church in Grafton, West Virginia, where she spent 20 years taking Sunday school classes. Grafton is the home to the International Mother’s Day Shrine. Another service was also conducted on the same date in Philadelphia where Mrs. Jarvis died, leaving her two daughters Anna and Elsinore. So it was more of a homage service for Mrs. Reeves Jarvis than a general one conducted in honor of motherhood. Nevertheless, this set the stage for the later Mother’s Day observances held in the honor of motherhood.

Following this, it gained a widespread popularity across the nation. The Mother’s Day International Association came into being on December 12, 1912, to promote and encourage meaningful observances of the event. Anna’s dream came true when on May 9, 1914, the Presidential proclamation declared the 2nd Sunday of May to be observed as Mother’s Day to honor the mothers.

It was here in the first observance that the carnations were introduced by Miss Jarvis. Large jars of white carnations were set about the platform where the service was conducted. At the end of the exercise one of these white carnations was given to each person present as a souvenir of Mother’s Day. All this was done because the late elder Jarvis was fond of carnations.

From there, the custom caught on — spreading eventually to 45 states. The first Mother’s Day proclamation was issued by the governor of West Virginia in 1910. Oklahoma celebrated it in that same year. It stirred the same way in as far west as the state of Washington. And by 1911 there was not a state in the Union that did not have its own observances for Mother’s Day. Soon it crossed the national boundary, as people in Mexico, Canada, South America, China, Japan and Africa all joined the spree to celebrate a day for mother love.

The Mother’s Day International Association came into being on December 12, 1912, to promote and encourage meaningful observances of the event. Starting from 1912, Mother’s day began to be officially declared a holiday by some states. Anna’s dream came true when in 1914, President Woodrow Wilson declared the first national Mother’s Day, as a day for American citizens to show the flag in honor of those mothers whose sons had died in war.

The House of Representatives in May 1913 unanimously adopted a resolution requesting the President, his cabinet, the members of both Houses and all officials of the federal government to wear a white carnation on Mother’s Day. On May 7,1914, a resolution providing that the second Sunday in May be designated Mother’s Day was introduced by Representative James T. Heflin of Alabama and Senator Morris Sheppard of Texas. It passed both Houses and on May 9, 1914, President Woodrow Wilson made the first official announcement proclaiming Mother’s Day as a national holiday that was to be held each year on the 2nd Sunday of May. He asked Americans to give a public expression of reverence to mothers through the celebration of Mother’s Day:

"Now, Therefore, I, Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the said Joint Resolution, do hereby direct the government officials to display the United States flag on all government buildings and do invite the people of the United States to display the flag at their homes or other suitable places on the second Sunday in May as a public expression of our love and reverence for the mothers of our country."

And issuing a Mother’s day Proclamation has since then been a convention.

Nine years after the first official Mother’s Day, commercialization of the U.S. holiday became so rampant that Anna Jarvis herself became a major opponent of what the holiday had become. While honored for her part in the growth of the holiday, Anna Jarvis’ last life was miserable. As the observance of Mother’s Day enjoyed increasing popularity, new dimensions came to be added to it. This made Anna Jarvis disillusioned with her own creation. Though the original spirit of honoring the mothers remained the same, what began as a religious service expanded quickly into a more secular observance leading to giving of flowers, cards, and gifts. And Anna Jarvis was unable to cope with this changing mode of expression.

History courtesy The Holiday Spot.