As reported by Big Government:

Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL), who was the subject of allegations of congressional insider trading, has indicated that he will not seek to extend his term as chair of the House Financial Services Committee after 2012.

Progressive media has fought hard against the story of insider trading, first broken by Big Peace Editor Peter Schweizer with his book Throw Them All Out. Leftist media attempted to discredit the sources and blow off the story, but after President Obama mentioned it in his State of the Union Address, the tactic was turned on its ear.

Earlier this week Joel Pollak discussed how the Huffington Post issued a mea culpa after working hard to encourage dismissal of the story:

Give Ryan Grim of the Huffington Post credit: it takes courage to change one’s mind, and to admit an earlier mistake.

Grim has written that he was wrong to dismiss a November 2011 report by 60 Minutes (based on Breitbart editor Peter Schweitzer’s book, Throw Them All Out) on insider trading in Congress:

At the time, I wrongly reported that 60 Minutes’ poor choice of targets for its report, and its clumsy attempt to connect specific trading to specific legislative action, set momentum for the bill back. Instead, in fact, the report propelled the legislation forward.

Grim had initially reported that the 60 Minutes report “falls short.”

What changed?

Much of the left and the left media–including the Huffington Post, Politico, and Media Matters for America–dismissed the issue of insider trading and tried to discredit both the allegations and their source. Now that Obama has taken up the legislation–with its sponsor, Senator Scott Brown (R-MA) obtaining Obama’s explicit commitment to make Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid move it through the Senate–the left is scrambling to catch up.

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If you want a case of clear bias, the Washington D.C. affiliate of CBS will surely fill the bill for its bias against pro-life supporters. On January 23 the DC affiliate featured on its website a photo slide show of pictures taken at the March for Life rally held annually at the nation’s capitol. Curiously, though, there wasn’t a single photo of any pro-lifers. Instead, the photo essay featured only photos of abortion-supporting protesters who stood on the sidelines taunting the pro-life marchers.

The photo slide show initially featured seven photos of abortion supporters, such as one of marchers holding signs saying “Family Planning Saves Lives Worldwide,” one featuring women holding signs saying that abortion should be kept legal, and another showing a woman sporting an abortion on demand sticker.

Upwards of 50,000 pro-life supporters turned out in the DC cold to participate in the March for Life, yet apparently CBS could only find the small handful of pro-abortion supporters to photograph.

Pro-life advocates like Jill Stanek were incredulous, and it wasn’t long before the comments section on the CBS website exploded with pro-lifers crying foul. Dozens of unhappy commenters remarked how badly the bias of CBS galled them.

Finally, a day or so later, CBS altered its slide show and added some photos of some of the actual participants of the pro-life march. The slide show now features seven photos of pro-lifers and an equal amount of pro-abortion supporters.

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Tablet magazine, the new online Jewish-themed publication that focuses on a broad range of current affairs topics, has taken Media Matters for America (MMfA) and the Center for American Progress (CAP) to task for using antisemitic language in criticizing Israel.

Illustration from Tablet: Daniel Hertzberg

In two separate articles, Tablet takes on the organizations that are the core of the Democrats’ media and policy strategy, joining a debate in which the defenders of MMfA and CAP have resorted to the worn-out fallacy that their critics are trying to silence debate on Israel.

One article by Spencer Ackerman–whose blog was once hosted by CAP–addresses “fellow progressives” and insists that while criticism of Israel is sometimes appropriate, those who use anti-Jewish tropes–like specious charges of dual loyalty and “Israel first”–undermine the case they are trying to make. He singles out Media Matters, CAP, and the radical pro-Palestinian lobby J Street, among others, for their rhetorical record of bigotry:

Some on the left have recently taken to using the term “Israel Firster” and similar rhetoric to suggest that some conservative American Jewish reporters, pundits, and policymakers are more concerned with the interests of the Jewish state than those of the United States….

“Israel Firster” has a nasty anti-Semitic pedigree, one that many Jews will intuitively understand without knowing its specific history. It turns out white supremacist Willis Carto was reportedly the first to use it, and David Duke popularized it through his propaganda network. And yet [Media Matters' M.J.] Rosenberg and others actually claim they’re using it to stimulate “debate,” rather than effectively mirroring the tactics of some of the people they criticize….

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Yesterday Elliot Abrams was part of a calculated effort against one of the GOP primary candidates whose last name wasn’t “Romney.” It’s typical in any primary, but what wasn’t typical was that in this republican primary, the information was misconstrued and presented a false narrative to readers. Jeffrey Lord at the American Spectator takes Abrams to task for his piece and says it is “not worthy” of its author:

Abrams

A piece like the one Abrams wrote depends for its success in garnering headlines — which it did — by assuming no one will bother to get into the weeds and do the homework. Usually a safe assumption when dealing with the mainstream media, particularly a mainstream media that, as one with Establishment Republicans, hates Newt Gingrich.

Not so fast.

Due to the diligence of one Chris Scheve of a group called Aqua Terra Strategies in Washington, Mr. Abrams has been caught red-handed in lending himself to this attempted Romney hit job.

Mr. Scheve, you see, is himself a former foreign policy aide to none other than Speaker Newt Gingrich in his days as Speaker. While now out on his own and not working for Gingrich, Scheve is considerably conversant with the Gingrich foreign policy record.

Uh-oh.

That’s right. Mr. Scheve, incensed at what he felt was a deliberate misrepresentation of his old boss by Abrams and the Romney forces, specifically of Gingrich’s long ago March 21, 1986 “Special Order” speech on the floor of the House, and aware “that most of his [Abrams'] comments had to have been selectively taken from the special order” — Scheve started digging. Since the Congressional Record for 1986 was difficult to obtain electronically, Scheve trekked to the George Mason Library to physically track down the March 21, 1986 edition of the Congressional Record. Locating it, copying and scanning, he was kind enough to send to me …

… I can only say that what Elliott Abrams wrote in NRO about Newt Gingrich based on this long ago speech is not worthy of Elliott Abrams.

Specifically, Abrams implies that Newt Gingrich was spewing mindless vitriol about Reagan on the House floor. Not only not so, it was quite to the contrary.

Read the whole thing. Ben Shapiro has the full text of Gingrich’s remarks.

Such hits on candidates is expected in primaries, but a heated primary is no excuse for conservatives in media to forget their principles and assume the characteristics of progressive media. Lord is right on this. Let the purposeful inaccuracies stop.

Media outlets didn’t cover March For Life while it happened, despite knowing it was going to happen and hundreds of thousands of people there. News outlets do have stories on it now, but of course the number of people there are distorted and the stories are pretty bland. Again, remember how much effort went into Occupy Wall Street coverage. Reporters were at the scenes. News stations were always on them. Also if they had anyone on the scene at March For Life they’d have a more accurate number of people.

Photo Credit Michelle Fields from The Daily Caller

The best coverage belongs to Judge Andrew Napolitano on his show  ”Freedom Watch” on FOX Business Network. Judge Napolitano is a fierce pro-life advocate and doesn’t shy away from the issue. At the end of every show he signs off with “The Plain Truth” and yesterday it was about abortion.

His guest was Rep. Renee Ellmers who discussed the defense of life. This was the most coverage by anyone in the media. Thank you, Judge Napolitano.

I then went to FOX News and I’ll admit, I was disappointed. The article was written by Shannon Bream and just like C-SPAN she called the protestors anti-abortion. Yes they are anti-abortion, but why doesn’t anyone ever call them pro-life? Why do they have to be constantly addressed as anti? When pro-choice protesters march they’re referred to as pro-choice, not anti-life. She did, however, give a reasonable estimate of people there, tens of thousands. Trust me, that’s much better than some of the others.

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- The National Journal fact checks and compares Obamacare and Romneycare.

- Hysterical. Jeopardy contestants can’t identify Rachel Maddow:

Obviously they, along with most of the country, don’t watch MSNBC.

- Newt Gingrich isn’t the only thing Marianne Gingrich helped to propel to #1 last week.

- Twitter can now censor Tweets in certain countries:

The social network Twitter is facing a storm of criticism from users, after revealing that it has implemented a system that would let it withhold particular tweets from specific countries.

The company has insisted that it will not use the gagging system in a blanket fashion, but would apply it on a case-by-case basis, as already happens when governments or organisations complain about individual tweets.

The new system, which can filter tweets on a country-by-country basis and has already been incorporated into the site’s output, will not change Twitter’s approach to freedom of expression, sources there indicated.

- Washington City Paper notes the obvious and asks: Where are the women and non-white media critics? The problem? They rattle off a list of known progressive white male critics. When you look at only super far left progressives wherein diversity is a rhetorical device rather than observed practice, of course you’d wonder.

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Is WikiLeaks biased against the West and the US in particular? This news item would tend to indicate so.

According to Christian Science Monitor Moscow correspondent Fred Weir, Kremlin-funded media outlet Russia Today is set to hire WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, despite the fact that Assange remains under house arrest in Britain, awaiting a Supreme Court decision on his extradition to Sweden to face sexual assault allegations.

According to Weir [my emphasis]:

WikiLeaks founder and controversy magnet Julian Assange has been driven off the Internet, deprived of funding and placed under house arrest. Now he will get his chance to strike back, courtesy of the Kremlin.

Starting in March, Mr. Assange will host a 10-part series of interview programs with “key political players, thinkers and revolutionaries” on Russia Today (RT), a state-funded English-language satellite news network which claims to reach more than 85 million viewers in the US alone.

According to a statement on his website, the new Assange series will explore the “upheavals and revolutions” that are shaking the Middle East and expose how “the deterioration of the rule of law has demonstrated the bankruptcy of once leading political institutions and ideologies” in the West.

Assange said, in a statement published on his website:

Through this series I will explore the possibilities for our future in conversations with those who are shaping it… Are we heading towards utopia, or dystopia and how we can set our paths? This is an exciting opportunity to discuss the vision of my guests in a new style of show that examines their philosophies and struggles in a deeper and clearer way than has been done before.

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It’s hard for the Activist Old Media to out-do itself with their leftist bias, but the Romney tax returns have them freaked out.

This fits right in their wheelhouse of deception and class envy.

The latest is an ABC story with this headline. “Romney Failed to Disclose Swiss Bank Account Income.”

Sounds serious there. Sounds like they finally busted Mitt and they are preparing the graphics and music for the hour-long prime time special showing him doing the IRS perp walk.

Five paragraphs into the story you find out the amount is $1,700 dollars. Now, $1,700 is more than most recent Democrats candidates for president donate to charity in a year, but on Romney’s tax returns to find a missing $1,700 dollars is like finding a penny in the cushions that you forgot to report. I guess the dollar amount is not important (unless its somebody making too much money,) it’s the headline they were after here.

Better get top terrorist reporter Brian Ross out of the Caribbean and off to Switzerland to uncover this latest Romney plot.

NBC’s Brian Williams called Romney’s wealth “unimaginable.” Unimaginable? How you doing Brian in your luxury Manhattan apartment? Ask your neighbor Beyonce if you can borrow some sugar.

Better send that crew back to Mexico to see how the branch of the Romney family is doing down there and demand they tell you how much money they make off their citrus farms. You left that out of the last story you did on them.

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When John King opened the last CNN-hosted GOP debate with a question regarding Newt Gingrich’s ex-wife, Newt lit into him, putting King on the defensive early. In fact, King remained defensive during CNN’s post-debate report.

“This story did not come from our network,” King contended. “As you also know, it is the subject of conversation on the campaign. I get your point, I take –”

Since the debate, King hasn’t let the issue go. He’s been making media appearances –after the fact–to bolster what many believe was a poor decision. Frankly, it’s hard to envision any mainstream media moderator opening up a Democrat debate with that type of question. They’d be more likely to claim it shouldn’t be asked, as it was the candidate’s personal life, none of our business, and didn’t impact on their ability to govern. (more…)

From Newsbusters, via Fox Nation:

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Marketplace, the daily business program produced by American Public Media (APM) and broadcast by public radio stations throughout the country, has been doing its best lately to support the decrepit Occupy Wall Street movement. While odd, perhaps, for a program ostensibly focused on financial news, the obsession with promoting Occupy has become a feature of public radio in general, and Marketplace is no exception to that rule.

Yesterday, for example, Marketplace’s Kai Ryssdal hosted an organizer from Occupy and a leader of the Tahrir Square protests in Egypt to explore “common ground” and connections between the two groups. The intent was clearly to flatter Occupy by association with the success and idealism of the Tahrir Square revolution–although the fact that Islamist parties swept the vote in Egypt’s recent elections was not mentioned in the segment.

Curiously, the political advice offered by the Tahrir Square activist at times spoke more to the concerns of the Tea Party about big government, and inadvertently punctured some of the socialist pretensions of Occupy: “[You should] engage those 1 percent and you tell them: ‘Take bureaucracy and take away corruption. We could do way much better.’”

Nonetheless, in a related story by Ryssdal and Mitchell Hartman from Jan. 24, Marketplace sought to find the inspiration for the Occupy Wall Street protests in the Arab Spring: “Young people feeling squeezed, demanding better opportunities and a fair deal. The issues sound similar — from Maged in Cairo, to Max and Brian in Portland.”

At one point, Hartman even compared the protests against former Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak to the protests against Wisconsin’s new Republican governor, Scott Walker, last spring–an inflammatory comparison favored by public sector unions in their attempt to demonize Walker and his collective bargaining reforms. Hartman suggests that the symbolism of the Wisconsin protests may have inspired the Occupy demonstrations–without noting the financial and institutional role played by public sector unions in both.

While casting the Occupy movement in a heroic mold, Marketplace often attempts to downplay and debunk the Tea Party and its concerns.

On Jan. 23, for example, the show featured a story entitled, “Why Saul Alinsky Matters in the 2012 Election.” Instead of shedding light on who Alinsky was, what he believed, and why he is important to understanding President Barack Obama and the organized left, Ryssdal and interviewee Bob Bruno from the University of Illinois attempted to obscure the true nature of Alinsky and his ideas: (more…)

Reuters this morning published a grossly inaccurate story on Senator Marco Rubio. Among the eight fallacies:

Rubio also voted against Sonia Sotomayor, Obama’s Supreme Court nominee who is of Puerto Rican descent, and more recently blocked the confirmation of another Puerto Rican, Marie Carmen Aponte, as ambassador to El Salvador.

Rubio was not a senator at the time the Sotomayor vote was cast.

Reuters also asserts:

He also voted against Obama’s healthcare overhaul, which is popular among many low-income Hispanics.

Rubio was and is against it but could not have voted for it at the time because he had not been elected. Obamacare passed in March 21, 2010. Rubio was elected on November 2, 2010 and assumed office on January 3, 2011.

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Big Government reported earlier this morning on a Media Matters for America email on the Keystone Pipeline that exposes the true, partisan lobbying agenda behind everything the tax-exempt group does.

The email was sent, apparently in error, to key staff from the office of Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) in an attempt to provide talking points to “allies” (read: left-wing Democrats) in pushing back on the Keystone XL pipeline, which is supported by Republicans, some Democrats and the majority of Americans.

The key line in the email:

We are hoping for a big media splash, but – more importantly – we’re hoping that allies will be able to leverage it to gain favorable coverage.

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- Irony: super transparent, no government secrets Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is getting his own television show … on Kremlin funded and comically controlled RT America, aka Komrade Kommuniqué.

It’s the television channel that has given voice to a thousand anti-western conspiracy theories, while avoiding criticism of the hand that feeds it. Now state-run Russia Today, the Kremlin’s English-language propaganda arm, has forged an unlikely partnership – with the self-proclaimed defender of truth and freedom Julian Assange …

… “Our viewers are open to the discussions that will be presented through Julian’s show on our channel,” the channel’s editor-in-chief, Kremlin loyalist Margarita Simonyan, said in a statement.

I can’t wait to see how long Assange lasts the moment he speaks of Russia and whispers of revolution after their last exercise in pretending to hold an election.

- Reuters comedically botches a hit piece on Marco Rubio:

Reuters is out with a tough story on Sen. Marco Rubio today, arguing that, the senator “has had significant financial problems that could keep him from passing any vetting process as a potential vice presidential choice…”

Unfortunately, it appears many of the facts are either wrong or exaggerated.

By my count, there were at least 7 errors or exaggerations:

1. “Rubio also voted against Sonia Sotomayor, Obama’s Supreme Court nominee who is of Puerto Rican descent…”

(Rubio wasn’t even in the senate then.)

- Romney finds use for WaPo’s Jennifer Rubin commentary as mailer content.

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Mitt Romney appears to be so anxious to hit Newt Gingrich on anything and everything, he completely misses the point that the mainstream media moderators of debates are the most powerful people in the room. They can shape, or frame questions, or an entire debate however they please. The Right feels they often do so to our disadvantage. Romney would appear to disagree.

Mitt Romney dismissed Newt Gingrich’s attacks on the media during an appearance on Wednesday’s “Fox and Friends.”

The former Massachusetts governor lambasted this strategy. “It’s very easy to talk down a moderator,” he said. “The moderator asks a question and then has to sit by and take whatever you send to them. And Speaker Gingrich has been wonderful at attacking the moderators and attacking the media. That’s always a favorite response for the home crowd….

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Whether they choose to acknowledge it or not, everyone in media understands what Media Matters for America (MMfA) is really about.

MMfA is an online group of modern-day book burners, a tax-exempt gang of bullies and propagandists dedicated to snuffing out conservative political opinion from the national discourse. To accomplish that goal, the George Soros-funded organization uses boycotts, intimidation, and the like.

Another of Media Matters’ obvious goals is to affect the mainstream media’s political narrative using these same tactics. Any story that might damage the left is immediately targeted by MMfA, using outright lies and half-truths.

The bottom line is that Media Matters is not dedicated to correcting or clarifying or illuminating truth; they’re dedicated to a left-wing political agenda which they intend to achieve by any means necessary, including outright blacklists and censorship.

In this same vein, most of us who work in media know what Politico is really about. The online publication arrived in early 2007 and pulled one of the most effective cons in Internet history. By using all of 2007 to masquerade as a news outlet sincerely dedicated to honest and unbiased reporting, Politico was able to ingratiate itself with high-profile conservatives and conservative outlets.

It was all a lie, but we all fell for it, and through the Right’s generous links, praise, blog-rolls, and talk radio interviews, Politico rose in prestige and name recognition.  Its power and influence in hand, in 2008 Politico threw off the disguise and came at conservatives with both barrels blazing in order to see Barack Obama to the White House. In the three years since, Politico has never looked back.

What prompted me to look into the possibility of an unspoken relationship between Media Matters and Politico was this story. As biased as Politico is, to witness Politico media blogger Dylan Byers use tactics perfected by Media Matters to push for a conservative’s firing from CNN was a new evolution for Politico–and not in a good way.

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Give Ryan Grim of the Huffington Post credit: it takes courage to change one’s mind, and to admit an earlier mistake.

Grim has written that he was wrong to dismiss a November 2011 report by 60 Minutes (based on Breitbart editor Peter Schweitzer’s book, Throw Them All Out) on insider trading in Congress:

At the time, I wrongly reported that 60 Minutes’ poor choice of targets for its report, and its clumsy attempt to connect specific trading to specific legislative action, set momentum for the bill back. Instead, in fact, the report propelled the legislation forward.

Grim had initially reported that the 60 Minutes report “falls short.”

What has changed his view is not the merits of the argument against insider trading–which Grim acknowledged at the time as “a serious problem in Washington”–but the fate of the legislation, which President Barack Obama suddenly supported during his State of the Union address last night:

Much of the left and the left media–including the Huffington Post, Politico, and Media Matters for America–dismissed the issue of insider trading and tried to discredit both the allegations and their source. Now that Obama has taken up the legislation–with its sponsor, Senator Scott Brown (R-MA) obtaining Obama’s explicit commitment to make Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid move it through the Senate–the left is scrambling to catch up.

Grim’s (honest) change of heart is likely the beginning of a broader and less principled shift, in which the left will attempt, in Orwellian fashion, to rewrite the history of its opposition to the Schweizer book, the 60 Minutes report, and congressional legislation on insider trading.

Big Brother says insider trading in Congress is wrong; therefore it has always been wrong. (more…)

Let’s commend Jon Chrisos, co-host of Good Day Maine on WPFO Fox 23 in Portland, ME, for posing a simple and direct challenge to Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius:

Last night, the President gave his State of the Union speech. We all watched it here in Maine, very anxious to hear what he had to say. It was about seventy minutes, but a lot of people [were] surprised this morning that we didn’t hear much about health care reform. During the speech, the President really only mentioned “health care” or “health care insurance” three times. So, Secretary, my question for you is: if you and the President still believe in this Affordable Care Act, then why was it such a small part of the speech?

Sebelius’s response was less than convincing, or coherent:

…He didn’t focus his time last night on what has already been done, but really on where we need to go in the future–on American manufacturing, on skills for our workers for 21st-century jobs, on a new American energy policy…knowing that part of the middle-class opportunities now will come to fruition with affordable, available health care for all Americans.

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With the publication of Peter Schweizer’s best-selling book Throw Them All Out, Media Matters for America embarked on a scorched-earth campaign in an attempt to undermine both Schweizer and his book, while dismissing the topic of insider trading in Congress.

Bet they’d like to have that one back.

Here’s just a taste of their relentless attack. Each headline represents another post, with even more vitriol at the link on MMfA’s website:

60 Minutes Questions Suggesting Pelosi “Conflict” Reportedly Based On Schweizer Book

Bush, Beck, Breitbart, Palin: Schweizer’s Deep Right-Wing Ties

Schweizer Previously Pushed Dishonest Smears Of Pelosi In Prior Book

Schweizer Wrote Falsehood-Laden Op-ed Accusing Al Gore Of “Hypocrisy”

Schweizer Authored Book Blaming “Big Government Liberals” For Financial Meltdown

For its part, Politico mostly followed the Media Matters line on the story, with much of its report relying on quotes from Nancy Pelosi’s office. They even included a shot at Schweizer: (more…)