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William F. Jasper

Thursday, 13 May 2010 01:00

Media Bias: Demonizing the Right

media biasOn February 12, Dr. Amy Bishop, an associate professor of neurobiology at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, pulled out a pistol during a staff meeting and opened fire on her fellow faculty members, killing three and wounding three others. Chances are you heard or read about the case. And you may have read or heard in some of the follow-up reporting about other bizarre incidents earlier in her life, such as her 1986 “accidental” shooting of her brother (after which the shotgun-wielding Bishop took hostages) and her being a suspect in the 1993 case of a pipe bomb that had been mailed to a Harvard professor with whom she had had a dispute. But, most likely, you didn’t read or hear that the 44-year-old, Harvard-educated Bishop was a fanatical “Obama Girl.”

agents provocatursOn August 9 Hal Turner is scheduled to go on trial in federal court in Brooklyn, New York, for allegedly threatening three federal appeals court judges in an Internet blog post. For the past several years, Turner, an Internet radio shock jock, has been one of the top purveyors of incendiary racist bombast. He has been dubbed the “Host of Hate” by the Southern Poverty Law Center and has provided the SPLC and other left-wing activist groups with a handy image to use in smearing conservatives.

Anthony LakeAnthony Lake, the controversial adviser on foreign policy and national security for Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, is scheduled to take over as executive director of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) on May 1, replacing Ann Veneman, who has held the post since 2005.

CIA sealIt may have been that the Good Lord was telling America something recently when He called hence the soul of Alger Hiss. It may be that that call to judgment on November 15th of one of our country's most notorious traitors was providentially timed as a reminder of the terrible cost of betrayal and a grim portent concerning high national security appointments soon to follow.

The arrests on March 28 and 29 of nine people associated with the so-called Hutaree Militia in Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio have provided media commentators and reporters with an opportunity to broadly smear all political conservatives, constitutionalists, Tea Party activists, and opponents of President Obama's health care as "extremist" and "anti-government."

UN buildingFor most of us, the mention of Girl Scouts evokes images of innocent, fresh-faced girls selling cookies, singing around campfires, enjoying arts and crafts, and doing good deeds. Alas, such idealistic reminiscences may be doomed artifacts of a bye-gone era, if the women in charge of Girl Scouts, USA have their way.

censusSome of the biggest guns of the tax-exempt philanthropy world — Ford, Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Soros — are using their funding clout to promote participation in the federal 2010 Census, especially among the many activist organizations they finance. And a new study released by their coalition of foundations indicates they hope to use the census process to duplicate in the 2010 mid-term elections some of the successes their activist grantees scored with the election of President Obama and a Democrat-controlled Congress in 2008.

Obama signingIn an Oval Office ceremony closed to the press, President Barack Obama on March 24 signed the executive order he had promised to Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) and a bloc of Democrats in order to obtain their votes for healthcare legislation passed three days earlier. Rep. Stupak provided the critical flip-flop, claiming he could switch and vote for the "Obamacare" bill because President Obama had promised to sign an executive order to ensure that no federal money would be used for elective abortions under the insurance system created by the new law.

"By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America ... there is established within the Executive Office of the President the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform." Thus begins the Executive Order signed by President Barack Obama on February 18, creating what is being called the Debt Commission.

wolf"Wolf Wars," the cover story for the March 2010 issue of National Geographic, may seem, at first read, to be a "balanced" report on the ongoing battle pitting ranchers, hunters, recreationists, and conservationists of the Rocky Mountain states against Big Green environmentalists and Big Government (federal and state) bureaucrats. Author Douglas Chadwick does, after all, seem to report sympathetically on the plight of ranchers like John and Rae Herman of Montana's Hot Springs area, whose 800-head Angus cattle operation has been hard-hit by wolf predation. However, like most media reporting on wolves, his article hymns the supposed overall benefits of the reintroduction of Canis lupus to the ecosystem.

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