More Lies From the LA Times

The headline on Google News reads:

Michele Bachmann confuses John Wayne Gacy with The Duke

I don't even need to read the story to know this is a lie. It's possible, I speculate, that Rep. Bachmann forgot the murderer's real last name. She may have any number of details wrong. But I'd bet the Managing Editor of the LAT dinner at his favorite restaurant that Michelle Bachmann absolutely knows who is the film actor John Wayne and that he is not the infamous murderer.

Which leads me to wonder, as I have so often in the past: Why can't Progressives any longer make up even semi-plausible lies when they try to smear a conservative?

P.S. Ok, I just scanned it. Here's what she said: "Well what I want them to know is just like John Wayne was from Waterloo, Iowa. That's the kind of spirit that I have, too," Bachmann told a Fox News reporter.

Here's the LA Times making hay out of the smallest of errors:

One small detail: John Wayne Gacy, the infamous mass murderer is from Waterloo. The Duke, although his parents met in Waterloo, is from Iowa, but from Winterset, nearly three hours away by car.

Shocking!

I'll best she doesn't know the difference between Guiana and Guyana, either. Clearly unfit to be President!

Sheesh.

Lying Muslims and Useful Idiots

Some Muslim Brotherhood spokesman named Abdel Moneim Abou el-Fotouh has been given a megaphone by The Washington Post to lie magnificently declare:

"For Muslims, ideological differences with others are taught not to be the root cause of violence and bloodshed because a human being's freedom to decide how to lead his or her personal life is an inviolable right found in basic Islamic tenets."

Uh, huh. Tell that to the relatives of the dead 14-year old in Bangladesh who was whipped to death by authorities for the crime of being raped. Oh, wait. They won't care, because it was one of their own who perpetrated the crime, then informed the authorities about her 'sin'.

The heroic Andrew C. McCarthy tells the story as an example of how sharia operates in the real world, no matter what its apologists might say.

In Bangladesh a 14-year-old girl named Hena was raped by a 40-year-old man, Mahbub, who is described in a report as her “relative.” Apparently — the report is not clear on how this happened — the matter was brought to the attention of the sharia authorities in her village of Shariatpur.

You’d think this was a good thing … except, in Islam, rape cannot be proved absent four witnesses — i.e., it’s virtually impossible to establish that what happened happened. That’s a dangerous thing for the victim — deadly dangerous in this instance — because if she has had sexual relations outside marriage but cannot prove she has been raped, she is deemed to have committed a grave sin.

In Hena’s case, the sharia authorities ordered that she be given 100 lashes. The young girl never made it through 80; she fell unconscious and died from the whipping.

Sure, it would be easy to dismiss this incident as just another savage act by the savages who occupy an unfortunate amount of land in the world. That's not the point, at least not the main one. The point is that there is a deep – but by now very obvious — connection between those acts and their ideology.

So long as useful idiots like those at the Washington Post continue to provide a neutral platform for these thugs, and for both parties to be allowed to pretend we all just have reasonable differences of opinion, this sort of thing will continue to plague those far outside Bangladesh.

How to Eliminate "Inflammatory Right-Wing Rhetoric"

At Breitbart's Big Government, I offer a few words on the Left's attempt to connect the shootings in Arizona with 'right-wing' political activism.

It begins:

Many commentators almost as mad as Loughner have attempted to connect this lunatic’s actions to “inflammatory right-wing rhetoric.” I won’t go into here the long list of inflammatory left-wing rhetoric (and actions) that spill over into open violence. (Michelle Malkin has a good summary — with detailed proof — if you’re interested.)

Instead, I’ll make a suggestion.

If the Left wants to eliminate at a stroke the vast majority of heated, hated right-wing rhetoric there’s a very simple way to do that: give up. ...

Read the rest here.

More Gangster Government

One of the distinctive characteristics of gangster "business operations" is to make up the rules as they go along. Gangster government does something similar when they ignore the courts and Congress and simply go on as if no one had said anything.

One more instance in a long line of that occurred with the recent FCC declaration of the Orwellian-named "net neutrality" rules. I wrote an article some time ago about how any such rules necessarily violate property rights and the right of free trade. Peter Ferrara demonstrates in an American Spectator essay how Obama's thugs are proceeding Chavez-like to demonstrate how much they truly don't care about that.

On April 6, 2010, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled in Comcast Corp. v. Federal Communications Commission that the FCC does not have the power to issue net neutrality regulation.
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Rejecting that reasoning in an opinion written by one of the Circuit's more liberal Judges, David Tatel, the Court had to remind the FCC that "administrative agencies may act only pursuant to authority delegated to them by Congress."

The Court said regarding the FCC's reasoning, "if accepted it would virtually free the Commission from its congressional tether." The Court added that "without reference to the provisions of the [FCC's governing] Act directly governing broadcasting, the Commission's ancillary jurisdiction would be unbounded."

Indeed, the FCC's lawyers suggested to the Court in oral argument that in the agency's view it already has the power to impose price controls and rate regulation on Internet service providers and broadband operators.

Yet, the FCC just flouts this decision in going ahead and issuing its net neutrality regulations by rulemaking last week.

If there is any good option at this stage for businessmen — and us, who trade with them — other than simply ignoring the law, I can't think what it might be. It's that, or passive acquiescence to tyranny. We are now ruled, in fact, by petty dictators unbounded by anything but resource limitations in enforcing their Progressive whims.

NPR's Contradictions

NPR's moral failures go far beyond firing Juan Williams for a politically incorrect remark. It's deeper than being irked over his appearances on allegedly right-wing Fox News.

NPR's CEO, like Progressives everywhere, is caught in the contradictions of subjectivism. Faux liberals that they are, they preach tolerance for everything - because according to their ethical philosophy there are no objective principles of morality - then display intolerance for a remark they regard as "inconsistent with our editorial standards and practices.”

There's no way out of this inconsistency for a faux liberal. It's built into the basic fiber from which the Progressive cloth is cut.

Not content with CEO Schiller's getting herself into hot water by publicly remarking that Williams should've "consulted his psychiatrist" before making the statement, NPR's Ombudsman doubled down on the lunacy.

In a story headlined: "NPR's Firing of Juan Williams Was Poorly Handled" the lying fence-sitter said:

Juan Williams once again got himself into trouble with NPR for comments he made at his other job, at Fox News.

Right. His firing was "poorly handled" but he really did bring it on himself.

She tripled the foolish factor by adding:

Instead, this latest incident with Williams centers around a collision of values: NPR's values emphasizing fact-based, objective journalism versus the tendency in some parts of the news media, notably Fox News, to promote only one side of the ideological spectrum.

That's rich. NPR is objective but Fox is biased. Um, NPR proudly upholds Progressive values (a fact favorably noted by over a third of its listeners as one reason they tune in). Those values are entirely the opposite of fact-based and by definition are not objective. Progressivism's core epistemology comes from Pragmatism, whose central premise is there's no such thing as objective anything.

Apart from all that blatant hypocrisy, the firing of Juan Williams shows that contemporary liberals never mean anything they say about black people.

Here, a black liberal gets fired for making a mild comment about Muslims. (One that even moderate Muslims in this country would agree with if they weren't too scared to speak up, and one he even qualified to nullity later in the same program.) But since blacks no longer have it institutionally bad in this country, they've outlived their usefulness to white race hustlers like Vivian Schiller. So, Muslims are now the au courant 'oppressed' group that faux-liberals can drool all over with their faux sympathy.

If it should come to pass someday that this idiotic series of wars finally comes to an end - contrary to Gen. Petraeus' belief — then Muslims will settle into being just another group whose more vocal self-appointed spokespeople yammer about their victimhood. Then there will no doubt be some new convenient 'oppressed' group that so-called liberals can use to undermine individual freedom.

Of course, the real outrage here is not chiefly the depressingly familiar hypocrisy of yet another Progressive, but that NPR - a (partly) taxpayer funded news and editorial radio program - exists in the first place. Let them compete in the open market and they can be as intolerant - and embrace as many contradictions - as they like.

Pajamas Media Article: Why the 10:10 Video Is a Distraction

Please head to Pajamas Media and read my article on Why the 10:10 Video Is a Distraction.

In it, I argue that the real enemy is much more dangerous, because much more benign looking.

Here's how it begins...

A British group called 10:10.org recently released (then quickly pulled) a viro snuff film. In the video, teachers press a red button to explode schoolchildren reluctant to accept the Green dogma of AGW (anthropogenic global warming) and other environmentalist fairy tales.

There's no question that the film is revolting and its producers are vicious, no matter how much they try to claim it was intended as humor. Still, the pundits up in arms over it are making a tactical error.

Your comments are invited.

Read the rest here.

Thanks,

Jeff

Chesler Smacks Down Time Magazine

Phyllis Chesler makes an unassailable point about Time's recent essay on the history of American intolerance.

Time magazine does not balance out their history of American intolerance with a history of American tolerance, which included separating the state from religion, reforming religions, instituting a tradition of free speech, fighting a bloody Civil War in order to free the slaves, giving women the vote and educational opportunities, freeing Europe from Nazi fascist rule and waging a Cold war against Soviet totalitarianism.

Also missing in the Time magazine article is the fact that Muslim leaders, in the name of Islam, have behaved very badly and for a very long time. Missing is an equal history of Muslim countries which have practiced colonialism, imperialism, forced conversions, slavery (which is still practiced), and a far more barbaric mistreatment of non-Muslims infidels.

But, then, everything she notes is no more than the usual media bias we've come to expect from those who once boasted their task was to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

"Bollinger Advocates Fascist Media" Published at Big Journalism

My article discussing Columbia President Lee Bollinger's advocacy of blending public and private media has just been published at Breitbart's Big Journalism.

Here's an excerpt:

In short, he prefers yet another “public-private partnership,” the now-familiar progressive corporatist model that met with such success in Italy in the 1920s. Odd, how the “private” party in that arrangement always turns out to be the junior partner. And yet he maintains that “state support does not translate into official control.” He seems not to have learned the popular phrase: he who pays the piper calls the tune.

Your comments are invited, here and there.

Maxine Waters' Ethics Charges

So, they finally got around to outing the old crone... about 40 years too late.

The story is particularly amusing because right on time it's labeled "a distraction." Naturally. Anything that slows the Democrats' rush to turn the country into Sweden (as, ironically, Sweden itself turns a hairs-width to more freedom) is "a distraction."

Of course, if it were Paul Ryan or Michelle Bachmann in the docket the action would, I am dead certain, be labeled something quite different.

Press, thy name is hypocrisy.

Published at PJM: The Crisis That Wasn't

Another of my articles has been published at Pajamas Media:

Here's an excerpt:

"Several news reports are showing that the expected devastation of the waters and shoreline of the Gulf simply hasn’t happened. Early (and historical) evidence suggests that it never will. The oil slicks expected to last for months have failed to cooperate with the government’s desire to use the crisis to pass cap and tax."

I also discuss the media reaction and a bit of oil spill history for comparison.


I invite you to read, comment, and pass the link onto friends and contacts.

Jeff

P.S. Not that there's anything wrong with a bit of earned pride, but not to worry about my recent good fortune giving me a swelled head. Right after it was accepted I went outside to pick weeds and chase a gopher out of one of the gardens. That sort of thing tends to keep one grounded.

Sunstein: Volunteer For "Fairness Doctrine," Or Else

Cass Sunstein, Regulation Commissar, simply won't let go of this theme of controlling what you read.

“The sites of one point of view agree to provide links to sites of the other point of view. So if you’re reading a conservative magazine, they would provide a link to a liberal site. And vice versa, just to make it easy for people to access to competing views.

Or maybe a popup on your screen that would show you an advertisement or maybe even a quick argument for a competing view.

If we could get voluntary arrangements in that direction, it would be great and if we can’t get voluntary arrangements maybe Congress should hold hearings about mandates.”

Forced competing views. Right. Because you're too stupid to click on HuffPo and NRO. You're also too thick to decide what to believe, and anyway there's no such thing as truth, only competing narratives. So let's force everybody to publish views they believe are false or pernicious. Just to be "fair and balanced."

One has to wonder when the American people are going to have enough of this. But then, thanks to the voluntary Pravdazation of the mainstream media, they're unlikely to have heard this particular gem.

Hey, maybe Sunstein has a good idea after all. Let's force them to print it in the NYT, the LAT, WaPo, and the Chicago Tribune. If the stockholders of the rapidly sinking dead-tree press don't care about editorial content, forget market pressure. Let's have a little ol' Chicago way instead.

Sheesh.

Andy McCarthy, National Treasure

Andy McCarthy - prosecutor of the Blind Sheik and others for the 1993 attack on the WTC - continues to prove his bona fides as one of the country's most valuable voices.

Lately, he's been exposing the questionable status of several Gitmo al Qaeda defense attorneys now employed by the Department of Justice. (Lawyers whom the DoJ refuses to name.) Here, he shreds an appallingly biased LA Times 'news story' on Justice Clarence Thomas's wife - who had the shameless audacity to start a Tea Party-affiliated organization.

So let me make sure I have this straight. If you're a "progressive" lawyer who volunteers to represent America's enemies for free in offensive lawsuits brought against the American people during wartime, and then you are placed in a policy-making position in the Justice Department, we're not allowed even to suggest that you be identified, much less to infer that the sympathies that impelled you to donate your talents to al Qaeda might affect your decision-making at DOJ.
...
But if you are the wife of a Supreme Court justice — not the Supreme Court justice himself, mind you, but the justice's wife — and you dare to have your own career and further dare to be a public conservative who defends core American principles of individual liberty against the Leftist onslaught, we are supposed to assume that the impartiality of the Supreme Court (on which the wife of the justice does not sit) has been compromised.

That's the upshot of the Los Angeles Times hit job this morning by Kathleen Hennessey on Ginni Thomas, wife of Justice Clarence Thomas. It's an unmitigated disgrace.

When will those silly white women married to black Supreme Court justices learn to stay barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen where they belong!

McCarthy's entire post will more than repay the short time it takes to read it. Intellectual ammunition of the first order.

[Update: Ed Morrisey of HotAir notes:

When Bill Clinton ran for President, the media scolded people who began questioning whether Hillary Clinton would use her influence to shape policy in the White House. Counter-critics called it a form of gender discrimination, and Hillary famously responded to it by defiantly noting that “I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas,” but decided to have her own career in law and politics.

But then, the hypocrisy of Progressive journalists was always the least of their sins.]

[Update 2: P.S. This particular Progressive journalist is so incompetent, she can't even get the basis of her smear correct:

The issue in the Citizens United case was concerned with a documentary about Hillary Clinton. It was not a flattering documentary. Citizens United wanted to show the documentary on cable television but it would be shown within 60 days of a primary.

The FEC said “no” and they used the grounds that Citizens United had been funded in a minuscule way by a corporation. SCOTUS was concerned about freedom of speech. The judgment actually went against Citizens United on a number of issues. However, it was the freedom of speech aspect, and the penalty that was provided by the FEC if Citizens United went against their ruling.

Please keep in mind that it was the penalty mandate that perturbed the SCOTUS. This was the reason that s144(b) was struck down.

The decision does not give permission for corporations to spend lots of money. What it does is give equality to types of corporations – the media are corporations but they were exempted from McCain-Feingold.

It gave the media an unfettered ability to misrepresent the facts, as well as the ability to damage candidates in any election, as well as damaging corporations such as Merck (example only folks). By striking down the section the corporations have the right to place an advertisement putting their side of the story without threat of fines by the FEC.]

The Iranian-D.C. Parallels

Has anyone observed how similar the silence downplaying of the mainstream media on the 9/12-Tea Party protests in D.C. is to the recent Iranian post-election news blackouts?

Just sayin'...


Hey, fellas. Ignore this!

Barbara Espinosa, a volunteer with Freedomworks, reports that the organization’s “metered” count of protestors is “more than 450,000.”

"Michelle Malkin reports that Capitol Police are estimating crowd at 1.2 million."

[Hat Tip: Big Hollywood]

Media Bias, Quantified

Van Jones is a crazy communist recently appointed by Obama to be "green jobs czar," whatever the heck that entails. (And thinking of the possibilities is truly frightening.) But he's not what this post is about. It's about media bias. For those who believe it doesn't exist among the mainstream press, Byron York offers some objective data.

Total words about the Van Jones controversy in the New York Times: 0.
Total words about the Van Jones controversy in the Washington Post: 0.
Total words about the Van Jones controversy on NBC Nightly News: 0.
Total words about the Van Jones controversy on ABC World News: 0.
Total words about the Van Jones controversy on CBS Evening News: 0.

[Hat Tip Mark Hemingway at NRO.]

Peggy Noonan Smack Down

In a somewhat rambling guest post on HotAir, someone with the moniker Doctor Zero makes a few good points about a recent highly ridiculous Peggy Noonan WSJ column:

Noonan is symptomatic of a defeated, collaborative wing of the GOP that wants nothing more than to be thought well of by the Left, which they believe has decisively won the political and cultural battles of the twentieth century. Their idea of a “conservative” is someone who can eke out a small discount on the price tag of mammoth liberal programs. Their goal in 2012 is to find a bland, pleasant, “moderate” Republican, who can win the approval of the media mullahs as a “serious candidate,” then lose gracefully and give America’s First Black President his second term.

The idea of serious conservative reform terrifies them: radical overhaul of the tax system, dramatic reduction in the size of government, a system that compels Congress to live like humble servants of the people instead of Renaissance royalty…

Who will throw those wonderful cocktail parties in Washington, if the conservatives burn half the city down? Who will tell Peggy bedtime stories of dashing social engineers with titanic government schemes? Where will she find hip, exciting statists she can celebrate with schoolgirl treacle, like this nonsense from her 2008 endorsement of Obama: “Something new is happening in America. It is the imminent arrival of a new liberal moment. History happens, it makes its turns, you hold on for dear life. Life moves.” She was on to something with that last bit. Obama has made a lot of American businesses think about moving.
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In her conclusion, Noonan writes, “And so the Republican Party should get serious, as serious as the age, because that is what a grown-up, responsible party—a party that deserves to lead—would do.” This is frothy, delusional milk, sprayed on top of a long, boring latte of condescension. Nothing could be less serious than fawning over a hollow President, who wastes his citizens’ time with absurd fantasies about multi-trillion-dollar health care takeovers, piled on top of an already astronomical national debt.

The latest polls suggest the public is becoming impatient with the infantile antics of the party Noonan thought should control both houses of Congress, and the presidency. If Peggy wants to see what an unserious, immature party looks like, she should watch video of Nancy Pelosi stammering about how the CIA lied to her, or leaf through the avalanche of scandals engulfing nearly every major Democrat. She could complete her education by dropping by to watch Al Franken squatting in his brand-new Senate seat.

At a time when radical opposition to statism is an absolute necessity if the American system is to survive the next 40 years, "moderation" is the last thing we need. It is for this reason that people like Colin Powell, David Frum, and their ilk are at least as traitorous as the so-called liberals they so-called dispute.

Tea Parties, Media AWOL

A recent Investors Business Daily editorial names the reason the major media are giving scant coverage to the Tea Party protests taking place around the country.

But the real reason the major media aren't interested in these protests is that they don't agree with them. In the final analysis, these affairs are really taking issue with the political party they helped elect without hiding bias in the last election.

That's why a small scrum of Acorn-financed wackos on a bus tour to intimidate AIG execs last weekend made the news while the tea parties didn't.

But unlike the staged, sparsely attended Acorn event, the tea parties are national, growing and indicative of a shift of public sentiment. If proof is needed, one need look no further than the attention the protests are getting from the Obama administration.

Yet more evidence, though we are long past needing it, that the major 'news' outlets are more anti-freedom than the politicians they have a responsibility to watchdog.

New York Times Bold Lies About Crisis

Say what you will about the New York Times, it is nothing if not bold. In one of the most dishonest stories editorials in recent memory Jo Becker, Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Stephen Labaton argue that the White House Philosophy Stoked Mortgage Bonfire.

Let's pass over quickly the fact that the White House has no philosophy and never has. A hash of tradition, panic, and sporadic grit does not make up a coherent set of beliefs. That aside, to blame the current mortgage-based economic crisis chiefly on Bush and the Administration is to have the point of view of an ant.

In an unusually long article there is no mention whatsoever of ex-President Clinton beefing up the CRA. When Fannie Mae and its crooked-as-a-dog's hind leg ex-CEO Franklin Raines is discussed it's only to say how pleased he was with his meetings with Bush. Nary a word about how Raines has been cozy with Dodd, Frank, and the Democratic Party for decades. Not a line about Greenspan, at the Fed through Republican and Democratic administrations alike, jerking around interest rates and the money supply for years.

Instead, we get the usual transparent bull about "Hands-Off Regulators." That's a joke. A very bad one. Keynesian Ben Bernanke hands off? Fascist Henry Paulson hands off? The thousands of regulations that have been distorting the housing, and every other, market for generations represent laissez-faire? Nonsense. On flea circus stilts.

The only significant regulatory loosening during the past 10 years was a modification of the Depression-Era Glass-Steagall Act in 1999. The major difference before and after was a repeal of the provision forbidding investment banks and commercial banks to play in the same sandbox. Apart from having nothing to do with causing the crisis, it actually helped, making it legal for Bank of America to buy tottering Merrill Lynch and Countrywide.

If we're to lay any blame at Bush's doorstep for this, remembering his (and Greenspan's) dozen attempts to get Congress to act to rein in Fannie and Freddie, it is only justified in that he did so little to actually push for free markets.

Obviously, to this type of mentality, until the U.S. is a virtual copy of the Soviet Union circa 1921, we will still have unregulated markets. Maybe not even then. Lenin had his NEP, after all.

Bad enough to have the memory and research skills of a gnat. But to have the soul of one, too, is beyond the pale, even for reporters at the New York Times.

More on Media and the Election

"Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought." - John F. Kennedy

The video below...



shows a number of Obama-voter interviewees responding to simple questions about the recent campaign, such as "Who said he would bankrupt the coal industry?" and "Whose party spent $150,000 on clothing?" The interviewees invariably either don't know or give Obama/Biden a pass while condemning McCain/Palin.

Of course, it's possible — even likely — that the documentarian is exhibiting selective bias. He may have selected, or at least chosen to show only those people who are bona fide idiots. Such people are easy to find and they make for entertaining viewing. Allegedly they were picked for their intelligence and ability to articulate, but we have only his word for that.

But an accompanying Zogby poll of 512 Obama voters, 97.1% High School Graduate or higher, 55% College Graduates, suggests they may be somewhat representative. It states:

57.4% could NOT correctly say which party controls congress

81.8% could NOT correctly say Joe Biden quit a previous campaign because of plagiarism (25% chance by guessing)

82.6% could NOT correctly say that Barack Obama won his first election by getting opponents kicked off the ballot (25% chance by guessing)

88.4% could NOT correctly say that Obama said his policies would likely bankrupt the coal industry and make energy rates skyrocket (25% chance by guessing)

56.1% could NOT correctly say Obama started his political career at the home of two former members of the Weather Underground (25% chance by guessing).

13.7% failed to identify Sarah Palin as the person on which their party spent $150,000 in clothes

6.2% failed to identify Palin as the one with a pregnant teenage daughter

86.9 % thought that Palin said that she could see Russia from her "house," even though that was Tina Fey who said that!!

2.4% got at least 11 correct.

0.5% got all of them correct.

From their answers, the only rational conclusion is that the breadth of their ignorance is appalling. Still, I have to hope this survey is deeply flawed. I have to, because otherwise I'll feel compelled to move to a country not on the map and devoid of human life.

But before we conclude that media bias won Obama the election, think again. The real answer may be worse. The media almost certainly helped, but even in those instances (such as the question on "who advocated redistribution") where the interviewee didn't know the correct answer, most thought it a good idea. That suggests that, to the extent they knew Obama's views, they favored them.

Granted, the interview (and the poll) are of Obama voters and the results are about what you would expect in terms of approval. Yet, in the end, isn't that the scariest fact of all?

Ignorance can be cured in short order. Media bias can be quickly cured if a more genuinely diverse set of views — and above all a dedication to objectivity — enters the information marketplace on a larger scale. But how long does it take to cure the type of philosophical corruption evidenced by a person who thinks government redistribution of wealth is a good idea, and do we have that much time left?

That is the once metaphorical, soon-to-be literal $64 trillion question.

[Hat tip: HotAir]

What Does Gotcha Journalism Get?

Gotcha journalism is nothing new. The volume — and the degree of vitriol and reaching — is higher than usual, because of the targets they aim at this campaign season. But for decades the press has been a part of the group I call "the Anti(s)."

But just what are they against and why does this pit them against people like John McCain and Sarah Palin, and a great many Americans besides?

Look for an explanation among the 'liberal' press and their supporters and all you'll find are statements to the effect that the members of the Fourth Estate are simply doing their jobs. Their role, so these pundits say, is to ask tough questions. Review conservative newspapers and blogs and you will read that those questions are 'liberal' and 'biased'.

The conservatives are right, but they rarely explain what they mean.

It's true that a lot of people in this country are Christians and the press sometimes mocks them. But Barack Obama is a Christian and endures no such contempt from newspapermen. Many people own guns. But, the press rarely has anything to say about the subject unless some specific hand-gun control legislation is up for debate. And, being a patriot means different things to different people. Journalists and their Democratic brethren often cry they are as patriotic as the next guy.

Neither does calling reporters and so-called liberal intellectuals 'elitists' really tell us much.

Warren Buffett is among the elite, in that he is both extremely rich, and extremely skilled at his profession. Yet, he is admired by both contemporary liberals and conservatives, despite being a consistent supporter of Democratic candidates. Albert Einstein is one of the most elite humans ever to have lived and no one cared much during his lifetime or now that he was an all-but avowed socialist. He has always been regarded as a great genius, and rightly so.

Bias is only part of the explanation, too. It is hoped even when it isn't expected that journalists will be fair and objective. But when they are not there is little outrage when news reports are slanted the way their readership prefers. Only a small percentage of the American people demand that the press be unbiased. If they had, the major news outlets would already be out of business.

No, none of those are the fundamental reason so many people mistrust the major news outlets and their employees (their approval ratings are about equal to the current single-digit Congress). Nor do they explain why the press is so hostile to conservatives or Republicans.

The answer involves what lies within the meaning of the phrase I used earlier: the Anti(s). Just what is it that the overwhelming majority of the major news outlets' journalists are anti? American values. Independence of thought, individual freedom, a desire for material success.

The conservatives despise 'the media' because they know what the Anti(s) want: to do what they can to transform America into something other than what it has been, a free country. The media despise the conservatives because their plans are meeting determined opposition.

What are those plans?

They want an end to private property freely exercised in ways the Anti(s) disapprove. They want markets controlled because they want individual economic choices they dislike controlled. They want the money spent as they wish, rather than as those who earned it would otherwise spend it. They want a foreign policy, which however misguided still aims at American self-interest, run in a humbler fashion because American self-interest is anathema to them.

As a fundamental means to those ends, they want to control who speaks what, where, and how.

They favor the speech codes that infest so many American campuses. They look with favor on proposals to bring back the Fairness Doctrine, a disguised form of controlling speech in the name of making it 'fair' (similar to the way antitrust laws distort markets to make them 'fair'). They ridicule or shout down anyone with a contrary opinion and they do so with little regard to objectivity. They avoid a full display of the relevant facts. They give Obama a pass when he tries to use the DOJ to shut down investigation of his association with domestic terrorist William Ayers.

They are, to borrow a phrase from Ayn Rand's For The New Intellectual, the Witch Doctors to the politician's Attila. They want to say how things will be run, and they want them run according to their values, values which are much closer to those of Sweden today than to the U.S. of the 1890s.

They have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. Speech codes are nearly universal on major campuses. It would be a trivial task to name a dozen major Anti news organizations off the top of ones head, with only one pathetically weak and often silly outlet on the other side. They nearly succeeded in getting the U.S. to lose the Iraq war against the jihadists by reporting only the bad news and ignoring the good. They have persuaded nearly everyone to accept an untenable theory about global warming and the virtues of the vicious environmental philosophy behind it.

But a determined minority is fighting back. Liberty-loving bloggers, conservative and libertarian newspapers, Objectivists, and speakers from a growing pro-freedom cadre are pushing back. Hard. The Anti(s) are on the run and they know it. That's why they are so angry right now. They see their domain and their plans threatened and they're not about to go down without a fight after so many years of fighting to transform America in their image.

They are going to lose. The Pro(s) are on the move.