Ah, the hypocrisy of our national media for its silence…

Vice President Joe Biden is known for putting his foot in his mouth. Now, his staff is allegedly stuffing reporters in closets.

A Florida newspaper reporter claims Biden’s staffers placed him in a storage closet last week to keep him from chatting up guests during a high-priced fundraiser.

Scott Powers, a veteran political reporter for the Orlando Sentinel, was the lone newsman assigned to cover the $500-a-head bash for Sen. Bill Nelson at the home of developer and Democratic bigwig Alan Ginsburg on Wednesday.

But when he showed up at the posh Winter Park mansion, a “low level” staffer hustled him into a storage closet and stood guard outside the door, Powers told The Drudge Report.

The staffer told Powers he could come out when the veep arrived to give a speech.

“When I’d stick my head out, they’d say, ‘Not yet. We’ll let you know when you can come out,’” Powers told Drudge.

During the wait, while the 150 guests noshed on caprese crostini and chicken Caesar wraps, Powers waited patiently, sipping bottled water and killing time at a makeshift desk set up amid the clutter.

“Sounds like a nice party,” he emailed his editors, along with a picture of the temporary prison, the Orlando Sentinel wrote on Wednesday.

After about an hour and 15 minutes, Powers was let out to listen to Biden and Nelson speak.

If Bush were President, Katie Couric would be broadcasting live tonight from aforementioned closet.

It’s too bad our once valued media has sold itself to the Liberal Devils….. again, Part 4,796.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

There must be some kind of a trigger in certain liberals’ psyches that whenever they encounter a conservative argument they can’t understand — or at odds with their vision of what conservatives should be saying — they respond attacking their favorite right-wing demons, be they George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Sarah Palin or the Koch Brothers.

And they seem particularly vicious when dealing with Mrs. Palin — and other attractive conservative women.

This morning when I woke to check the commentary to a piece I had posted in the wee hours of the morning, I found that instead of addressing the point of the post, a memorial tribute to prominent Democratic politician who had shown class, dignity and grace on the public stage, particularly in the twilight of her life, one of our perennial critics responded not by acknowledging the qualities of Geraldine Ferraro but instead by attacking Sarah Palin.

I found these attacks particularly ironic, given that when I crafted the post, I had intended to reference Ferraro and Palin’s joint appearance on FoxNews as an example of the Democrat’s class, but chose to exclude it, fearing it might detract from the tribute I wished to offer Mrs. Ferraro.  A number of our readers also noted the irony, with Sonicfrog finding the critic’s response “priceless” and Sean A wondering about some liberals’ obsession with Sarah Palin:

Obsessed? Don’t be silly, of course liberals aren’t obsessed with Sarah Palin. Clearly a post entitled “In Memoriam Geraldine Ferraro” demands a response that attacks Sarah Palin.

Sarah Palin has really become the official left-wing panty buncher.  Jennifer Rubin finds that it’s not just Sarah Palin.  Other conservative women cause liberal pundits to get their panties all in a bunch, spurring them to act ”like college freshmen catcalling from the balcony of their fraternity house“.

What is it about attractive and outspoken conservative women that drives certain left-wingers bonkers?

Remember all the stories the mainstream media devoted to “what is being dubbed as the “Kill Teams” – rogue elements of US forces accused of intentionally killing unarmed Afghani civilians.” Jazz Shaw sure does, but he points out that they hardly gave this story the attention they devoted to the horrific photographs of prisoner abuse at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison now nearly seven years ago.  And he hints at one reason behind the media’s apparent disinterest in this story:

The real question here crossed my mind while watching more than an hour of television coverage of this story this morning, as well as reading the Rolling Stone article which is more than eight pages and I don’t know how many thousands of words long. Many names are mentioned, ranging from the individual soldiers involved and their direct supervisors all the way up to General McChrystal. But one name seems to be conspicuously absent from all of this coverage. Can you guess who it is? I’ll give you a hint… his initials are B.H.O.

When I suggested this to a friend this morning he responded by saying, “I don’t really agree that it’s right to hang every act of soldier misconduct on whomever is president. If a soldier gets drunk on leave, drives drunk, and kills a motorist, is it the president’s fault?”

It’s an important point. The president is definitely not responsible for every single action by every soldier acting badly such as in the example he cited.

He’s right.   The president is not responsible for the rogue actions of the bad apples in our armed forces.  Yet, during Iraq, our mainstream media spent weeks trying to tie the abuse at Abu Ghraib to the then-president even though the Army had begun an investigation of the crimes long before the photographs became public. (more…)

Noting the prominent position anarchists played in the recent London riots, Glenn Reynolds asks a question which crossed my mind as well:

But if you’re protesting against government budget cuts, can you really call yourself an anarchist?

Log Cabin Executive Director R. Clarke Cooper is not the only one contending that our normally loquacious ”Commander-in-Chief owes an explanation to the American people” for the Libya operation.  In her column on Friday, Peggy Noonan noted the same thing:

I cannot for the life of me see how an American president can launch a serious military action without a full and formal national address in which he explains to the American people why he is doing what he is doing, why it is right, and why it is very much in the national interest. He referred to his aims in parts of speeches and appearances when he was in South America, but now he’s home. More is needed, more is warranted, and more is deserved. He has to sit at that big desk and explain his thinking, put forward the facts as he sees them, and try to garner public support. He has to make a case for his own actions. It’s what presidents do!

Read the whole thing.  The Athena of punditry is back on her game.  Her words must have resonated with the administration; not too long after they appeared on the Wall Street Journal’s web-page, the White House announced that the president would be delivering a speech today on the Libya operation.

Noting the “firestorm of criticism about President Obama’s failure to lead on Libya and his refusal to articulate his goal(s) for the war,” Jennifer Rubin found it odd when the administration made the announcement in a “late afternoon ‘news dump’”, trying ”to slip his about-face by the media before the weekend”.   Normally, presidents, she remarked, can’t wait to get their message across.

Maybe the reason this president is speaking out only reluctantly on Libya is that he really doesn’t have a message.  He chose to act, not out of principle, but out of fear, fear that Gadhafi’s survival would mean continued tension in Libya, with ever higher oil prices.  And he knows that if gas remains at or near $4 a gallon, his reelection prospects would look particularly bleak.  In short, this is all about keeping oil prices down.   (more…)

Oftentimes a defining characteristic for a public official is not how he wields power and conducts himself when in office, but instead how he concedes defeat and exits the public stage.  Some, like former House Speaker Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill choose to exit the stage without the voters tossing them out and and do so with grace and dignity.

That Democrat set a pattern that all federal legislators should emulate, returning to the jurisdiction which elected him, where he wrote his memoir (a quite good one at that), enjoyed being a grandfather and watching the Red Sox play ball (among other things).

Although his former House colleague did not exit the stage as willingly as he and while she continued to play a role in her party’s politics even after her defeat, Geraldine Ferraro conducted herself with no less dignity on the public stage than did O’Neill.  Indeed, in her final years, as a regular guest on FoxNews, she did much to promote her party’s agenda to a more conservative audience — and show that one could defend liberal ideas without insulting or otherwise belittling conservative individuals.

She, like other liberal regulars on FoxNews, including former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, mastered the art of civil discourse in the sound-byte format of discussions on a TV news network.  She showed considerable respect for her ideological adversaries — and demonstrated an understanding of their ideas, all the while speaking her mind.

When she died on Saturday, politicos, reporters and pundits cited her many accomplishments, including the one event which earned her a place in the history books, her nomination as the Democratic candidate for the Vice Presidency in 1984, the first woman to serve on a major party’s ticket, it is important also to remember how nobly she conducted herself long after that nomination thrust her into the national limelight, particularly in the twilight of her life.

She provided an example that all public figures should emulate.  On both sides of the political aisle.  A true stateswoman she.

UPDATE:   Michael Barone offers a nice tribute here.