After “a swift firefight that killed three of the four Somali pirates who had been holding” Captain Richard Phillips “for days in a lifeboat off the coast of Africa,” the U.S. Navy freed that kidnapped man and captured the surviving kidnapper.

Kudos to the heroes of our armed forces.

Since President Obama signed off on this mission, I congratulate him on acting decisively to release the captain without agreeing to any of the pirates’ demands.  Kudos, Mr. President, you got this one right.

Blogger Tigerhawk (via Glenn) has two questions: “What will we do with the prisoner? Do we believe that this action is sufficient to restore deterrence against piracy?”

While we need do much more to keep the sea lanes open and free from such threats, we should be celebrating today.  Credit is due to our armed forces and the President.  He ordered the rescue plan; they executed it.  It’s a good day for America.

Let’s hope the President’s success today spurs him to act so aggressively when similar threats arise and to prevent them from happening.

UPDATE:  Abe Greenwald:  ”The U.S. did not dither with negotiations or treat this as a criminal matter. It acted unilaterally and with force to free a brave man.”

UP-UPDATE:  Drawing on his knowledge of ancient history, Victor Davis Hanson alerts us to what we must do next.  ”To end Somali piracy, disproportionate measures against the shore should be taken—for every one pirate assault, a lethal air assault should immediately follow“:

Pompey’s victories over the Cilician pirates, the Venetian clean-up of the Mediterranean sea-lanes, and the British success in stopping Caribarrean piracy were all predicated on going ashore, destroying the docks, headquarters, and homes of the pirates.

UP-UP-UPDATE:  Looksl like the Captain is himself a hero of his own rescue.  ”Reports say Captain Phillips jumped overboard again, and the US Navy moved in — killing three of the pirates and taking one into custody.”

Welcome Instapundit Readers!!

When the mother of the ex-fiancé of the daughter of the former Republican Vice Presidential candidate has a drug problem, it makes the front page of Yahoo!, yet when the half brother of the Democratic President of the United States is denied entry into the United Kingdom because he has been accused of sexual assault, the American media ignores it.

Wonder why they’re only interested in stories of gossip and gaffes involving Republicans.  Guess it’s just not a story when Democrats (or their family members) do thes same sort of things which generate headlines for the GOP.

Ah, recall the good ol’ days when the dispatched whole teams to Wasilla, Alaska to dig up dirt on Sarah Palin and they can’t even spare an intern to do google searches on Democrats.

Wonder why that is.

FROM THE COMMENTS: Kcom, one of our readers offers an explanation:

The facts also support an alternative take, i.e. that the media is surprised and considers it newsworthy when a Republican does something like that but take it as a given that Democrats are corrupt, drug-using, sexual predators who routinely commit felonies.

And why report a story as unremarkable as that.

Some of the top talent in the banking industry is jumping ship from financial institutions taking bailout money to those that did not:

Top bankers have been leaving Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup and others in rising numbers to join banks that do not face tighter regulation, including foreign banks, or start-up companies eager to build themselves into tomorrow’s financial powerhouses.

. . . .

Now that their rivals must accept compensation limits and other restrictions that come with the use of taxpayer support, the foreign banks are finding more eager takers.

Our ailing financial industry is sure to recover more quickly with some of its best and brightest leaving for more lucrative opportunities.

Ol’ Barney Frank favors salary caps for executives in the financial industry–and not just those taking bailoit money.

Welcome Instapundit Readers!!

When shortly after taking office, President Obama was challenged by a “Republican senator over the contents” of his “stimulus” package, he replied tersely, “I won.” It was as if he saw his election not as a mandate to act on his campaign promises, but to do whatever he wanted.

It seems that some defenders of the president seem to think he won a mandate to increase domestic spending at an exorbitant pace. So much so that one of our readers contended that the tea party movement “was voted down in earnest last November.”

Was it?

Did Obama campaign on doubling, trebling even the federal budget deficit? No, he campaigned against the then-incumbent president’s profligacy.  As he said in the third debate:

But there is no doubt that we’ve been living beyond our means and we’re going to have to make some adjustments.

Now, what I’ve done throughout this campaign is to propose a net spending cut.

Emphasis added.  And although Obama faulted W’s profligacy, his own spending proposals are of “a whole different magnitude” than the budgets of his predecessor.

So, no, the American people didn’t “vote down” lower spending last fall.  When many independent voters, wary of high-spending Democrats, heard the then-candidate’s words, they took them to heart and were reassured he would not be like his then-congressional colleagues.

They didn’t vote against spending cuts in choosing Obama.  They voted for them because Obama promised to cut spending.  And not just in that debate.  Note, that he says he had proposed such a cut throughout his campaign.

He can’t say he won a mandate to increase spending as he has proposed in his budget because he didn’t campaign for such increases.

I didn’t make the Pasadena Tea Party today, but one of our readers did and she sends pictures, so I post ‘em here. She said about 200 showed up to protest higher taxes and bigger government.

It’s not just Obama we Californians are mad at. With our Governor, having won election running against his predecessor’s proposed tax hikes, now having increased income, sales, car and gas taxes, protesters are criticizing him as well.

FROM THE COMMENTS: Another reader was also in Pasadena, but she “estimated the crowd at more like 500.” With 500 there and 500 in Yakima, Washington, looks like there could be well over a quarter-million people at these protests, far more than the 214,000 people who signed petitions supporting the president’s budget.

As the tea party movement gains momentum, many supports of the President (and opponents of free markets) are becoming increasingly agitated, eager to smear, slander and otherwise discredit the movement.

Through e-mail (and in the comments), readers have suggested that the anti-gay AFA’s (American Family Association) backing of some of the protests somehow discredits them.  Well, International Answer, a Communist front organizations spearheaded many of the rallies protesting the Iraq War, that is, it it had greater involvement in those protests than does the AFA in the tea parties.

So by the standards of those faulting gay people for joining in protests sponsored by an anti-gay groups, all those protesting the Iraq War were Communist sympathizers (or closet Commies themselves).  I don’t recall reading about any non-Communist opponents of the Iraq War (and they probably constituted the overwhelming majority of the protesters) refusing to participate because a Communist group sponsored the rallies.

Yeah, I’d rather the AFA not be involved any of the protests.  But, they are one of many sponsoring these rallies against bigger government and higher taxes and for a less intrusive state and more personal freedom. There’s nothing on the sites for the tea parties which even remotely suggests an anti-gay agenda.  I mean, what is anti-gay about protesting “against out of control government spending“?

This is about freedom.  We believe that an ever-increasing federal government means ever greater encroachments on our liberty.

Their attempt to the discredit the movement because of some of its unsavory associations is really just a refusal to acknowledge the growing grassroots movement against the president’s spendthrift policies.  What is it about these partisans that they refuse to take seriously the ideas and motivations of their ideological adversaries?

Why can’t they recognize the sincerity of opponents of big government and the appeal of our ideas?  (Heck, they even tapped into one of our ideas (that of the burdens of deficit spending) when it was a Republican President who was overspending.)

Why would do they attempt to discredit us rather than engage us?

I have asked similar questions before.  And it seems the answer relates to the central narrative of the educated leftist–that his ideological adversaries are nothing more than hateful troglodytes eager to trample upon the rights of women, ethnic minorities and gays in their zeal to create a white Christianist (whatever that is) state.

As part of my graduate work (and before that out of intellectual curiosity), I have read much Jungian psychology.  Carl Jung was fascinated by pairings of opposites.  He explored the psychological meanings of polarities in alchemy and the hieros gamos, the sacred marriage, a union of opposites.

Earlier today, when reading a book by a man trained in Jungian analysis, Robert Johnson, I had a notion about the psychological projections of a large number of our fellow Americans.  Now the stuff I was reading did not have a perfect correspondence to the idea it engendered.  It merely reminded me of how when we suppress one aspect of our psyche, that aspect later comes to dominate.  Here’s a sample from Johnson’s Living Your Unlived Life: Coping with Unrealized Dreams and Fulfilling Your Purposein the Second Half of Life:

The other personality trait is suppressed, but it still exists as a potential, where it is added to the ever-growing inventory of unlived life.  Under stress this person often flips to the opposite, and the suppressed quality comes out in a clumsy, unadapted way.

Note how so many who reviled then-President Bush were moved almost to adoration of a man vying to succeed him.  You can see this phenomenon on cars in Los Angeles, with bumper stickers (still today) advocating the impeachment (or other punishment) of Bush next to iconic images of his successor.

Many who demonized Bush, all but deified Obama.

After expending so much energy on hate, they needed to find someone to revere with the same emotional intensity.  Hence, they their love Obama served to balance out the hatred they felt for Bush.

And we’re not even getting to whatever it was in their psyches that caused them to project their own inner demons onto George W. Bush.

RELATED: Obama Worship: Flip Side of Bush Hatred

Bush Hatred and Obama Euphoria Are Two Sides of the Same Coin

A subsequent reference to Robert Johnson: The Mother Complexes of Republican-Haters?

As the international “distractions” keep mounting for President Barack Obama, here are today’s developments in AMERICA HELD HOSTAGE: DAY FOUR.

• Somali pirates threaten to kill the Alabama‘s captain, Richard Phillips
• The Alabama arrives in port, without its captain
• Due to the non-response of America and NATO, another US-owned vessel is taken by Somali pirates

The Somali pirates stole $30M last year alone through bringing terror to international waters.  And where, my friends, do you think that money is going? 

After the Bush Administration shut down the financing of Al-Qaeda, they had to resort to the Somali pirates.  $30M can do quite a lot of damage when it is used to finance terror training, WMD development and fighting American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

So, thanks President Obama.  Not only are you losing a third front in the Global War On Terror “Man-Made Disasters”, but violence has disturbingly increased in Iraq since you took office.

I wonder if Al-Qaeda knows that Obama is weak?   Nah, couldn’t be.

AMERICA HELD HOSTAGE: DAY FOUR.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Here we go again.  Someone else is trotting out the tired trope of the left about the hypocrisy of closeted politicians.  “Oscar nominated filmmaker Kirby Dick is turning the spotlight on closeted American politicians in his latest documentary, ‘Outrage.’”  And given the current sensibilities of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, he stands a good chance of snagging yet another nomination and possibly a golden statuette.

He’s got a winning formula: point out the “hypocrisy” of certain Republicans.  (Wonder if he’ll followup with a film on the hypocrisy of a man running for the presidency promising a “net spending cut” yet, once in office delivering a severe spending explosion.)

Dick’s

film examines the double lives of a number of current political figures, mostly Republican men, who have masked their homosexuality through marriage to women and by actively working against the gay community. It explores the stories of politicians who, through their policies and voting records, actively bash gay people in order to prove they themselves are not gay. And it details a media establishment that keeps their secrets. The lives of former elected officals (and even some mainstream media figures) are also examined as the film explores the dual lives of public people who have chosen to live in the closet.

How will he define “working against the gay community”?  Probably means something like working against the agenda of the Human Rights Campaign and opposing liberal legislation.  Dick interviewed Larry Kramer and radio personality Michelangelo Signorile as well as openly gay Democratic Congressmen Barney Frank and Tammy Baldwin for his project.

Doesn’t look like he talked to any opponents of “outing.”  I wonder if he asked ol’ Barney about his own hypocrisy, you know, grandstanding for a company acting in accordance with a legislation he voted for.

Don’t bet it.  Only Republican hypocrisy is newsworthy, provided they (those on the left and in Hollywood) get to define what hypocrisy is.

Finally, here’s an interesting nugget, “IndieWIRE [my source for this story] recently watched an unfinished cut of the film and we have agreed to refrain from detailing certain aspects of the film, and some of those who may depicted (sic) in it“.  Looks like they’re trying to make news about whom they’ll be “outing.”

Maybe I’m wrong and maybe this will provide a nuanced view of “outing” with interviews of those opposed to the practice as well as some with serious reservations.  If so, it could serve to promote a serious discussion of the choices people make.

But, given the agreement the reporters made to see the film, it’s pretty clear he’s not looking to start a conversation, but only to get some attention.  This is Hollywood after all.  And when it comes to politics, the best way to get favorable publicity in this town is portray Republicans in a bad light.

Call me cyncial if unlike, but for some reason, I think that’s his real intention.  Kriby Dick wouldn’t be the first to ride that formula to Tinseltown success.

UPDATE:  Jenn Q. Public offers:

Publicly exposing the sexual orientation of gay Republican congressmen is, of course, a poor strategy for achieving pretty much anything other than schadenfreude.  Most conservatives are indifferent to what goes on in the private bedrooms of public officials so long as all participants are consenting adults.

A representative from Magnolia Pictures, the distributor for Outrage, told indieWIRE the film “could be a ‘game changer’ for same sex civil rights.”  They would be hard pressed to come up with a more shallow, tone deaf analysis than that.

Read the whlole thing.

Someone please help me answer this:  If Obama cannot stand up to Somali pirates who capture a US vessel and kidnap its captain… how confident am I that he will protect the USA from much more serious enemies who have already declared war on America and Western values and who want to murder Americans by the thousands?

Answer: Scared to death.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

I believe it was Glenn Reynolds who last week linked Janet Daley’s wonderful defense of capitalism in the wake of the G20 protests advocating the overthrow of the free-market system.

In this essay in Britain’s Telegraph, Ms. Daley offers one of the best nutshell defenses of capitalism I have read in recent days:

It is in the interests of the Left to talk as if capitalism and socialism were precisely analogous because then they can be seen as competitors and in bad times, the command economy as opposed to the market-based one can win the popularity contest. But this fallacious argument into which, I am sorry to say, a great many well-intentioned people are allowing themselves to be drawn is very dangerous: capitalism isn’t really an “ism” which is why the term “free market economics” is so much more apt.

When we make the case for capitalism, we are defending the political principle of freedom, not arguing for one kind of rigid economic organisation over another.

. . . .
The operative word in the phrase “free market economics” is ‘free‘.

We need remind people over and over again that capitalism is about freedom and that freedom includes not merely economic freedom, but political and artistic freedom as well.  Under capitalism, the artist can create whatever product he wants and is protected in his endeavors just as is the entrepreneur in his economic activity or the “dissident” and writer in their speech.

Janet Daley reminds us that when we talk about capitalism, we’re talking about freedom.  And those who seek to overthrow the system seek to replace a system which allows them the freedom to protest.

So, let’s remember that when we defend repeated encroachments on our liberty.  And learn to defend that noble idea as did the founders of our great repubic.

If you want to know why I oppose laws banning private employers from discriminating against gay people, all you need do is read an article in today’s Washington Post.  In “Faith Groups Increasingly Lose Gay Rights Fights,” Jacqueline L. Salmon finds:

Faith organizations and individuals who view homosexuality as sinful and refuse to provide services to gay people are losing a growing number of legal battles that they say are costing them their religious freedom.

The lawsuits have resulted from states and communities that have banned discrimination based on sexual orientation. Those laws have created a clash between the right to be free from discrimination and the right to freedom of religion, religious groups said, with faith losing.

Um, Jacqueline, can you please tell me where you found that “right” to be free from discrimination.  I’ve checked the constitution and sure didn’t find it there.  Now, in reviewing that august document, I did see this in the First Amendment, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” (emphasis added).   (And through the Fourteenth Amendment, that also applies to the states.)

Ms. Salmon cites a number of examples where individuals, organizations and entrepreneurs were fired for, fimed for or barred from refusing service to or inclusion of gay people.  Now, I personally think these groups are wrong to so exclude gays, but they’re not requiring me to buy their product or participate in their activities.

At the same time, if a gay group wanted to exclude Christians from its membership, it should be free to do so.  Their right to do that would come from the First Amendment’s clause on “the right of the people peaceably to assemble” and also possibly the Ninth Amendment.

But, these constitutional protections don’t seem to be a barrier to gay groups in their zeal to reduce the freedom of private individuals and organizations.  They are prevailing in courts according to Ms. Salmon “because an individual’s religious views about homosexuality cannot be used to violate gays’ right to equal treatment under the law.”

Say what?  That’s not equal treatment under the law.  That’s using the law to limit individuals’ freedom, just as it would be if Christians used the law to mandate that gay organizations include ex-gays or that gay businesses serve the Christian Coalition.

(more…)

I am thrilled to help announce the birth of a new national gay conservative organization, GOProud.  As long-time readers know I have been very critical of the national Log Cabin Republicans for many years.

Their left-of-center positions on important issues have bothered me as LCR has continually sucked the teet of the Gay Leftist agenda.  LCR’s silence and unwillingness to stand up and be vocal on true gay conservative issues (outing of Republican staffers, increasing threat of gays being selectively aborted, peril gays face by Islamic extremists) has been mind-boggling.   And LCR’s continued obsession in trashing Republicans, yet letting Democrats get a pass on their gay-related hypocrisies, has been infruriating.

Many of you, friends and critics alike, have told me if I wasn’t happy with LCR to do something about it.  I have tried shining light on the organization from GayPatriot.org.  But many of us felt more had to be done.

So I’m proud to announce my involvement as a board member of this new organization.  Many more details will follow and I will be sure to let you know how to get involved.   For now, please go to GOProud.org and sign up.

Ben Smith at the Politico has the scoop on our new gay conservative group:

A dissident faction of gay conservatives is launching a rival group to the traditional voice of gay Republicans, the Log Cabin Republicans.

GOPROUD, the new 527 group, will launch next week, according to a media advisory. The contact given for the group is Christopher Barron, a former Log Cabin political director who broke with the group.

“Essentially, there’s no voice for gay Republicans or gay conservatives in particular in D.C. right now.  Log Cabin has been completely and totally absent here in D.C. for months and months,” Barron said.    “It has simply moved way too far from the left and is basically indistinguishable from any other gay left organization.”

The ideological battle has been playing out in the gay media and on some blogs for a while, spurred in part by the Blade’s revelation that the Log Cabin Republicans’ biggest backer is a prominent Democrat, Tim Gill. Their complaint, in general, is that Log Cabin has grown indistinguishable from left-leaning gay rights groups.

The blog GayPatriot has been making the case for a split, and arguing that gay rights groups should make the case for same-sex marriage to a broader political spectrum.

[RELATED: Washington Blade picks up the story, too.]

Being gay doesn’t make you a liberal, being conservative doesn’t make you a bigot.

Sign up at www.goproud.org!

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Something struck me shortly after I learned that Endora-award winning blogress Tammy Bruce, while an Angelena, will not be at the Santa Monica Tea Party, but will instead be participating in the protest in Manhattan Beach, just a few miles down the coast.  Two protests so close together!  These things are multiplying faster than anyone could have imagined when people first started protesting the president’s spendthrift policies barely two months ago.

The sheer number of scheduled rallies already shows the success of this truly grassroots endeavor.  Unlike the Obama campaign, which was built around an individual, we don’t have a central organization in Washington, New York, Los Angeles or Chicago.  Our energy comes primarily from the citizens organizing in the various cities, not from the candidate around whom his supporters rallied.

To be sure, there is a website, but it provides information and advice, not direction.  It is individuals across the country organizing the various protests.  Moreover, we haven’t needed the apparatus of a political party.  Indeed, instead of the organizers going to the party asking for assistance, it’s party leaders coming to the organizers asking to participate.

And it takes effort to plan such a gathering.  That we see such effort from coast to coast is testament to the concern of citizens about the ever-increasing size of the federal government.  Another sign of the rallies’ success is further is the eagerness of some on the left to sabotage and/or smear our protests.  They can’t fathom that conservatives, libertarians and even moderates would engage in the type of activity in which they delight.

To be sure, protest, to borrow an expression, is not really our cup of tea.  We would really rather not rally; most of those upset by the proposed spending increases and certain tax hikes have real jobs.  And we don’t have much nostalgia for the demonstrations of the 1960s–as do some on the left.

This is truly a grassroots effort if ever there was one.  It shows that Americans’ love for freedom remains unabated, 236 years after our forebears protested British encroachments on our liberties.

So, join me in standing up for that idea which has defined our nation since its origins–freedom–and for a principle for which some of our greatest patriots fought–smaller government–next Wednesday, April 15 from 3 to 7 PM on the Santa Monica Pier.

We gay patriots will rally together, then retreat to Santa Monica watering hole to celebate our freedom and drink to its preservation.

It seemed a strange serendipity of circumstances that barely twenty-four hours after blogging about a journalism school honoring Katie Couric for biased coverage of Sarah Palin, I would discover the media ignoring the latest Joe Biden fabrication.

As I wrote last fall:

Joe Biden makes more gaffes the average week than Sarah Palin made in the entire campaign.  Take out . . . Palin’s interview with Katie Couric, and you could say that Biden made more gaffes per speech than the Alaska Governor made in the entire campaign.  And he had thirty-six years of “experience.”

While, during the campaign, the media made much of Biden’s experience, they ignored that of his rival for the Vice Presidency

Let me post a video I had posted last fall where former House Speaker Newt Gingrich comments on the biased coverage of the Alaska Governor and speculates that “to the best of [his] knowledge there has been a single question by an elite television journalist about [Palin's] actual career in Alaska”

Just as the media ignored Sarah Palin’s accomplishments, they ignore Biden’s fabrications.

They root into every detail of Palin’s private family life, even into the peccadilloes of her daughter’s ex-fiancé’s mother.  And while they not only rightfully ignore gossip about Biden’s family, they fail and fail yet again to highlight his own misunderstandings of issues and misrepresentations of fact.

The media did not cover Sarah Palin as they normally would cover an accomplished politician, but instead as an attractive celebrity.  And Biden, well, Biden, they treat as a fading celebrity whose reputation they are trying to protect.  They just don’t find his gaffes newsworthy.  It might upset the image of the wise senior statesman.

Yet, the more they ignore his miscues, the more evidence we accumulate of their bias.  They head to Wasilla to root around for dirt on Palin, yet when “dirt” on Biden emerges by the mere fact of him opening his mouth in front of a camera, they don’t even bother to check the tape.

Just by reviewing such tapes, they’d have an endless stream of stories.  And they wouldn’t need pay for airfare to the Last Frontier or weather the inconvenience of a long journey clear across the continent.

UPDATE:  Well Yahoo! did pick the story up (from Politico), but note how they frame it:  Rove: Biden a ‘blowhard’ and ‘liar’.  They make it as much about who’s calling the Vice President a liar as they do about the Democrat’s latest misrepresentation.  Given how regularly Biden makes things up, you’d think such “news” outlets at Yahoo! would actually investigate this rather than report it as the contention of a conservative pundit/political strategist.

The Vice President contends that during private meetings, he repeatedly castigated then-President Bush.  But, there’s not much substance to his “recollections” (which seem more a product of his imagination than his memory):

Aides to former President George W. Bush are challenging the veracity of Vice President Joe Biden’s claim this week of having privately castigated Bush, who does not remember the incident or an earlier episode in which Biden claims to have similarly rebuked Bush.

Biden spokesman Jay Carney declined to specify the dates of his boss’s purported Oval Office scoldings of Bush. Nor would he provide witnesses or notes to corroborate the episodes.

If a Republican were caught making things up about his meetings with a Democratic Chief Executive, there would be calls for an investigation and his resignation.

It made the Washington Post when then-Vice President Dan Quayle misspelled “potato.”  And Biden’s is a far more egregious error.  But, in my brief search to see who covered this story, I found that only FoxNews had reported the Democrat’s latest fabrications.

I probably just used the wrong keywords in my google news search.  Surely, the MSM wouldn’t miss a story like this.

. . . if you don’t use it to govern in a conservative manner?

This thought just struck me as I began Karl Rove’s latest piece for the Wall Street Journal.  When he was working for George W. Bush, Rove did his utmost to build such a majority, yet when we had it, Republican leaders didn’t use it to effect conservative reforms.

No wonder we’re in the minority now.

Welcome Instapundit readers!! While you’re here you might want to check my followup to this post, building on the notion of the tea parties as a grassroots phenomenon.

This morning, when I read that “the growth of the Tea Party movement as a grassroots outside-the-establishment phenomenon that has become so big that establishment figures are trying to jump onboard,” it struck me how in, many ways, this phenomenon is the opposite of another such movement which began in earnest just about two years ago.

While Barack Obama’s presidential campaign did tap into a frustration with the-then incumbent Administration, that movement was built around an individual not an idea.  Note how much the image of Obama was tied to the “ideas” of his campaign, “hope” and “change.”  And those ideas were little more than bromides.

In constrast to the Obama campaign, the “tea party” phenomenon is based on an idea, that of small government and personal freedom.  As such, it could have greater staying power.

In a comment to Ann Althouse‘s post referencing my theory on Althouse Derangement Syndrome, her reader John opined on how the left and right handle their ideological adversaries:

Ann is very much a centrist. Further her site is sometimes funny and almost always interesting. Who cares if she toes the right or left line as long as she is entertaining. That is the real difference between the left and right. The right can look at someone they disagree with and still appreciate them being a smart, intelligent and entertaining person. The left can never admit any unqualified virtues of anyone who disagrees with them. For the left it is all about emotion, good versus evil kind of stuff. I think for most leftist, politics rather than an intellectual endeavor is a personal, emotional endeavor about working out whatever issues they may have. For them, the personal really is the political.

Emphasis added.  His remarks echo something Camille Paglia said yesterday on her blog:

For the past 25 years, liberalism has gradually sunk into a soft, soggy, white upper-middle-class style that I often find preposterous and repellent. The nut cases on the right are on the uneducated fringe, but on the left they sport Ivy League degrees. I’m not kidding — there are some real fruitcakes out there, and some of them are writing for major magazines. It’s a comfortable, urban, messianic liberalism befogged by psychiatric pharmaceuticals. Conservatives these days are more geared to facts than emotions, and as individuals they seem to have a more ethical, perhaps sports-based sense of fair play.

And recall, that Paglia, like Althouse, voted for Obama last fall, with the former diva more optimistic about the president’s prospects.

[Please note that I revised this piece after first publishing.  I added no new information, merely improved the flow.  I had first written it in haste before rushing off to my Seder, then upon returning from that festive meal, read it through and found it choppy, so did my best to correct that.]

Last October, commenting on the media bias against the then-Republican Vice Presidential nominee Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich offered that “to the best of [his] knowledge there has been a single question by an elite television journalist about [the Governor's] actual career in Alaska.”

The media spent more time investigating her daughter’s indiscretions than her actual record in office.  Indeed, when she interviewed the Alaska Governor, CBS News Anchor Katie Couric did not ask Palin about her accomplishments.  Not about what the policies she had promoted or enacted, the budget she had administered or the corruption she had rooted out.

You’d think a woman might want to know how another woman brought down three corrupt male politicians, all in her own party.  But, Couric showed no interest in how this hockey mom had faced down and brought down some of the most powerful men in her state.

Instead of faulting Couric for this oversight, a journalism school is honoring her.  A week from today, the University of Southern California’s “Annenberg School for Communication will be presenting CBS ‘Evening News’ anchor Katie Couric with the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Television Journalism:”

. . .  what makes this situation so particularly galling is the specific reason why Couric is being honored for her “excellence in journalism.”  Couric is being presented with the award for “Special Achievement for National Impact on the 2008 Campaign.”

What was it that Couric did that was so “special”? The judges singled her out solely for “her extraordinary, persistent and detailed multi-part interviews with Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin.”

Singled out for posing numerous gotcha questions and editing the tape to the candidate’s disadvantage?  Singled out for one series of interviews with one particular candidate?!?! The judges failed to mention Couric’s interview with Joe Biden when that hapless Democrat showed he was clueless about the Great Depression.  But, no one paid any attention to Biden’s embarrassing answer.

I guess this panel determined excellence in journalism involved reporting in a manner which embarrasses a Republican.  It goes unnoticed when you embarrass a Democrat.

John Ziegler, who, in reporting the story of this award, provides numerous links which put Palin’s statements in the Couric interview in context.  So dissecting Couric’s “agenda-driven” reporting, he concluded:

It is obvious that Couric is being rewarded for the political result of her interview “the shooting down of a conservative superstar just in time to save the Obama campaign. It’s not about the “journalism’ at all. But even that truth is not the most outrageous aspect of this absurdity. What’s even more absurd is that not only shouldn’t Couric be getting rewarded for her Palin interview, if we lived in a world where journalistic standards still mattered at all, she would have been roundly condemned for it.

Indeed, she would. Instead of condemnation, she has earned praise.  Not a happy sign for the state of journalism today, but at least we have one more piece of evidence to prove our point about the bias of mainstream journalism.