According to SiteMeter, I got a huge number of hits this afternoon from Instapundit, but he didn't link to me, as far as I can tell. He doesn't seem to put up links and then take them down, so was it just a weird glitch? Email or comment if you have any idea what happened.

Avedon Carol at the Sideshow has an important reminder about Michael Kelly's most recent "Clinton is bad" article.

Kelly partially pegs this column on Dan Burton's report about Clinton's pardons. My first reaction when Burton released it was that it was just another taxpayer-financed chapter in the book of Clinton-hatred. My second reaction was, "Well, let's compare it with the Congressional report on Bush's pardons. What? The Democrats didn't write one?"

Avedon didn't forget:

Is there no one left at the Post who remembers the administration that preceded Clinton's? None of Clinton's pardons are all that horrifying when looked at clearly - and certainly none of them compare to those of President Bush, who pardoned his own co-conspirators in serious crimes to evade being the subject of their pending testimony. Clinton did not simply dismiss all charges against drug lords like Bush did, either. Nor is it true that Clinton let Marc Rich off the hook for the other charges against him. Clinton has falsely been accused of having given blanket pardons to people when he only reduced their charges to more closely fit the crimes they had actually committed; the complaints about the Bush pardons are much more serious.

How full of shit is Andrew Sullivan when it comes to Paul Krugman? This full:

The fact of Krugman's $50,000 Enron sweet-heart deal was reported first not by the Washington Times, but by the New York Times, that well-known organ of the right-wing conspiracy.

Let's remember how did crack investigative journalist Andrew Sullivan came across the ground-breaking story about Krugman's deal with Enron. He didn't have to do much digging. It was disclosed by Krugman in his own NY Times column! So is it accurate to say that it was "reported" first by the New York Times? No, it isn't; the phrasing is intentionally misleading, making it seem that Krugman tried to conceal something that he didn't.

This site, allegedly a tool of vast right-wing moneyed interests, also broke the story of Bill Kristol's $50,000 "fee," as well as reporting on Larry Kudlow's, Peggy Noonan's and Irwin Stelzer's easy Enron money.

Yes, and he reported on all of them combined less than 1/2 as much as you did on Krugman. That's not my estimate; Jonathan Chait counted 25 mentions of any other pundit's Enron connections, vs. 57 mentions of Krugman's Enron connections. Since then it's surely gone up; he's pounded on Krugman over and over and over, while conservative pundits are off the hook.

Krugman disclosed, they didn't. So where's the outrage, Andrew? I am so sick of this; I wish he'd get another chew toy.

I think my hit counter is going to break into five digits tonight. I'll have to break out the Cristal.

Washington Post reporter Susan Schmidt got a critical email from a reader. It was nasty and a little dumb, but not threatening or obscene. The reader sent it from his work email. Rather than ignoring it or defending herself, she responded by looking him up, finding his boss and the president of the institution, and forwarding the email to them.

I don't like this at all. Newspapers publish the email addresses of their staff for just this reason- so that readers can give them feedback. Has this woman never been criticized before? In what world is this an appropriate way to deal with someone expressing their opinion? Most bloggers engage in a lot of media criticism, and I’d like to think that I can criticize “the credentialed” without having a journalist turn around and try to squeeze me out of a job.

I'm going to be writing to Ms. Schmidt... as soon as I get to my personal email.

From Reuters:

The administration took money from the Energy Department's solar and renewable energy and energy conservation budgets to pay for the cost of printing its national energy plan.

Documents released under court order by the Energy Department this week revealed that $135,615 was spent from the DOE's solar, renewables and energy conservation budget to produce 10,000 copies of the White House energy plan released last May.

So, not only did they reject requests from environmental groups to participate in discussions, but they used money from the renewable energy budget to print up copies of a plan partially copied word for word from oil lobbyists' wish lists. It really couldn't be clearer whose side they're on, could it?

I must be the last person to realize that Dr. Frank is the Dr. Frank from The Mr. T Experience. He's apparently too shy to plug his band on his blog, so allow me. I'm losing all perspective and breaking out in a fanboy sweat here, because I love his band. They're some of the catchiest, funniest rock and roll I've ever heard. I highly, highly recommend them, especially Love is Dead. Go buy it, preferably from the Lookout! site, then buy a bunch more of their other stuff.

Here's just one example: "New Girlfriend", from the EP "Alternative Is Here To Stay"

My new girlfriend is better than you, she's got bigger breasts and a higher IQ
And she always knows which fork to use, and she doesn't always have some lame excuse
She's a-wigglin' and a-gigglin' and a-bakin' a pie, and I can tell by the look in her eye
that she's never gonna make me have to wonder why, and we're gonna have a hell of a time

And he links to me! Oh, this whole blog thing is so worth it.

I've got a lot to do, but I had to share that someone found my blog by searching for "Saudi chubby sex." Well, the world don't move to the beat of just one drum, I suppose.

Related but different subject- I've long thought that one of the worst problems with the war on drugs were the seizure laws that allowed police to seize evidence associated with a drug related crime, sell it, and keep the proceeds for the department. Police could do this even if there was no conviction. This created a clear conflict of interests, and there were notorious cases where police would raid an estate or a boat on a trumped-up context, find (plant?) some drug traces, and seize the property. Raises and new squad cars for all!

I worked up a head of steam on this subject, and was in the middle of an angry screed, when I found that the drug seizure laws that I hated so much had been reined in, at least on a federal level. (They're still in effect in many states.)

I never would have guessed who sponsored the bill to revise them- Henry Hyde. Good job, Representative Hyde! USA! USA!

Regarding the Supreme Court decision that authorizes the expulsion of all the members of a household if one of the members is caught with drugs, reader David Margolies emailed to make the valid point that the Supreme Court's decision was simply the Court enforcing the law as it was written. They didn't write it, so the blame lies with Congress.

I agree; the ultimate blame has to lie with the Congressional clerks who wrote this without inserting relevant language to protect innocent members of the household. However, allow me to risk embarassing myself for a second. I'm not a lawyer, or a Constitutional scholar. However, it looks to me as if the Supreme Court had two relevant choices here. First, they could have refused to take the case in the first place. If they hadn't, no one would have been hurt.

Once they took the case, they had two choices. One common-sense principle or the other would have to be violated. They could violate the common-sense principle that a person shouldn't be punished for the actions of a third party. Or, they could violate the common-sense principle that the word "any" means "every and all, regardless of circumstances." They chose to violate the first principle. I think that they had their priorities screwed up. I think that it would have been a reasonable interpretation for them to affirm the circuit court's ruling that a plain reading of the law is absurd and a violation of due process.

The implication of this ruling is that Congress has the right write laws that punish all of the members of any given group of people (these apartments didn't have to be made up of families) for the actions of any of the members, even if the other members had no way of knowing of the actions of that person. I'm really, really uncomfortable with that. Right now, I don't know what my brothers are doing, or my co-workers, or the members of my hypothetical bowling team. It's a matter of common sense (and dare I say, common law) that I can't be punished for their actions if I didn't know about them. But, now the Supreme Court has said that Congress can feel free to make such a law punishing me. I'm a little out of my depth here, but I don't think I'm wrong.

UPDATE: I had two contradictory second thoughts a few moments ago. I'm still comfortable with the morality (Congress shouldn't make laws punishing a person for the unknown actions of a third party), but I'm not so sure about the legal case. After all, the fact is that Congress wrote these drug seizure laws, depriving people of their property without any obligation for the government to prove that the person knew about the illegal activities in question.

On the other hand, couldn't a clever lawyer argue that the Hyde act explicitly limited the power of Congress to impose penalties on third parties? I don't know; comments are welcome.

I think Megan McArdle is dead wrong on the Supreme Court's decision about evicting whole families from public housing because someone in the family was using drugs. But her post about Israel is brilliant. I wish that I had written it. If the permalink doesn't work, scroll or search for "Stephen Green has a powerful post on the situation in Israel."

According to Glenn Reynolds,

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN IS WHINING, according to Howard Kurtz, about his lack of recognition in the McCain-Feingold signing "ceremony." When I was a Washington lawyer, I remember hearing people say that you can accomplish anything in DC if you don't insist on receiving credit. McCain should take the win and shut up, instead of grandstanding.

According to Howard Kurtz,

"McCain, who had championed the bill for seven years, offered a tepid, one-sentence statement of approval. His advisers were livid at what they considered a snub and said the White House's handling of McCain's long-awaited moment of triumph would set back a gradual warming in relations between the two men."

That's it, unless I missed something. Where's the whining? Where's the grandstanding? Maybe it's his advisers that he's talking about, but it isn't the same as what Glenn wrote. How McCain's behavior different from taking the win and shutting up?

Did you know what Gandhi, a devoted and intellectually consistent pacifist, said what the Jews should have done in response to the Nazis?

In relation to the late war, one question that every pacifist had a clear obligation to answer was: "What about the Jews? Are you prepared to see them exterminated? If not, how do you propose to save them without resorting to war?" I must say that I have never heard, from any Western pacifist, an honest answer to this question, though I have heard plenty of evasions, usually of the "you're another" type. But it so happens that Gandhi was asked a somewhat similar question in 1938 and that his answer is on record in Mr. Louis Fischer's Gandhi and Stalin. According to Mr. Fischer, Gandhi's view was that the German Jews ought to commit collective suicide, which "would have aroused the world and the people of Germany to Hitler's violence." After the war he justified himself: the Jews had been killed anyway, and might as well have died significantly. One has the impression that this attitude staggered even so warm an admirer as Mr. Fischer, but Gandhi was merely being honest. If you are not prepared to take life, you must often be prepared for lives to be lost in some other way. When, in 1942, he urged non-violent resistance against a Japanese invasion, he was ready to admit that it might cost several million deaths.

One part of me really, really likes Alex Knapp's proposal that Israel pulls back to its pre-1967 borders on the condition that (a) its Arab neighbors explicitly recognize its right to exist and (b) the new Palestinian state has a written Constitution that makes it a rule-of-law democracy. If this was possible, Glory be, it would be wonderful.

And a smaller part of me is just ready to throw up my hands and say, Israel, take them down. Pull your settlers out of the territories, but crush them. Is it really possible that this is really the least worst possible approach? What an awful world.

I hadn't seen Interesting Monstah before, but she's got at least two smashing posts. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find permalinks, so I'm going to have to ask you to search for them.

First, search for "Detainees" and find a story that slipped under my radar:

I've been watching for followup stories on some of these men, as their stories begin to be told. In the online world, at least. In recent weeks, there has been a light flurry of stories, including this Washington Post piece on a Mr. Anwar Mahmood, from Pakistan. Hanna Rosin writes, vaguely, that:

"All but a small number (out of 1200 or so detainees) have been cleared, but being cleared has turned out to be fairly meaningless. The Justice Department has not released information about the detainees, but sources there and at the Immigration and Naturalization Service say fewer than a fifth will likely remain in the United States. If they haven't been deported already, they are likely to be soon; and once deported, they can never return. Among the deportees are legal residents, such as Mahmood, and people married to Americans."

Up until now, I thought that "legal residents...and people married to Americans" were pretty much safe from the dragnet. Not so, apparently.

Does this disturb anyone besides me?

I didn't know that. Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't this mean that we're permanently expelling an unknown number of legal residents, who have been investigated and cleared, because of their ethnicity? In this guy's case, he's being deported because he helped his best friend's sister, an illegal alien, find a place to stay. He sends home $400 a month to his family, which allowed his three sisters to finish school. This is the most effective kind of foreign aid that will ever exist, and it's being yanked away.

This disturbs me a lot. It's a cliche, but one of the beautiful things about America is that anyone can come here and become an American. This is too precious a legacy to throw away. Beyond that, it's counter-productive; how much cooperation from Muslims in the US can we expect if we treat them like this?

The second great post is nearer to the top. Search for "Carmen Jonze" for a heartfelt history of black women in the movies.

I can't be the only one who finds Slate's habit of always picking an "Entertainment Weekly" style pun headline for Today's Papers annoying, but it's rarely as inappropriate as today's.

All hail Gary Farber for an excellent, detailed post about the Supreme Court's insane decision about public housing. I hadn't been paying attention, so I didn't realize what the decision meant. It was not the case that drug users can be evicted from public housing. Rather,

What was at issue was whether public housing authorities can evict people who have broken no law, and have no awareness of any law being broken, merely because someone in their household used drugs at one time, at some entirely different place, utterly without the knowledge of the primary renter...

The Supreme Court overturned the Court of Appeals, and held that tenants may be evicted "regardless of whether the tenant knew, or should have known, of the drug-related activity."

Specifically emphased in the decision is that "... any drug-related activity engaged in by the specified persons is grounds for termination, not just drug-related activity that the tenant knew, or should have known, about....
[...]

The court [of Appeals --ed] ultimately adopted this reading, concluding that the statute prohibits eviction where the tenant for a lack of knowledge or other reason, could not realistically exercise control over the conduct of a household member or guest. Id., at 1126. But this interpretation runs counter to basic rules of grammar."

Are we clear here? Third-party actions that it isn't reasonable for the tenant to have known about are grounds for eviction, because of the grammar of the law, says SCOTUS.
Pause and marvel at that fine "strict constructionism." Imagine what one would have said if that was the reasoning of a Soviet court.

"The agency made clear that local public housing authorities' discretion to evict for drug-related activity includes those situations in which [the] tenant did not know, could not foresee, or could not control behavior by other occupants of the unit."

So much for individual responsibility. No, the new rule is collective responsibility.

This is appalling, and I thank Gary for pointing it out.

I haven’t been writing about Palestinians or Israelis, and I really don’t want to start. But John Cole is right, we can’t forgive this, and I can’t begin to understand it.

I just came across Roger Ebert's review of Sorority Boys, and this made me laugh:

I know. I'm being too literal. I should be a good sport and go along with the joke. But the joke is not funny. The movie is not funny. If it's this easy to get a screenplay filmed in Hollywood, why did they bother with that Project Greenlight contest? Why not ship all the entries directly to Larry Brezner, Michael Fottrell and Walter Hamada, the producers of "Sorority Boys," who must wear Santa suits to work?

Via the Illuminated Donkey, the Flame Warriors. This guy knows wherof he speaks.

I don't know what happened to my comments; Blogger seems to be swingin' on the flippety-flop even more than usual.

A woman in upstate New York has been ordered to stop smoking or lose visitation rights to her son.

First thought when I saw the headline:

What a crock. This is the kind of nanny-state garbage that small-government types are going to be up in arms about, and they're right. No one should risk losing visitation rights to their own children because they're a smoker.

Then I read the article:

The 13-year-old allegedly complained to his lawyer and father last August that he did not want to visit his mother because cigarette smoke permeated her home... Her son's lawyer, William Koslosky, said the boy had complained repeatedly about the smoke, and that it was ultimately a health issue.

The 13 year old kid complained to his own lawyer? The kid has a lawyer? It seems likely that a kid who wants to stop visiting his mom because of her smoking is a kid who wants to stop visiting his mom, period. There's something very sad going on here. Not that that contradicts the nanny-state comments, mind you.

The judge is apparently a Republican, by the way.

More from Drudge: A link to this article about a racist video game where you kill blacks, Jews and Latinos to save the white race or something. The end boss is Ariel Sharon. It should go without saying that this is hateful and despicable, but it doesn't exactly surprise me.

What did surprise me was this paragraph. Emphasis added:

Resistance Records publishes the quarterly "Resistance" magazine; has a catalogue of books including Adolph Hitler's "Mein Kampf," Homer's "The Odyssey" and "The Illiad," and "Blood Ritual: Investigation into Jewish Ritual Murder Cases"; distributes music and Nazi military videos; carries a line of clothing, jewelry, and pins; and sells bumper stickers. You can also hear William Pierce's radio broadcasts.

WTF? I haven't gotten to my latest copy of "ZOG-Crusher Monthly" (I lent it to Pat Buchanan, and he never returns stuff), but since when was Homer embraced by white power groups? I'm baffled.

According to Drudge, in order to save Oscar night, they're considering having Jay Leno or Oprah Winfrey host it.

In other news, in order to save tedbarlow.blogspot.com, I'm going to let a comical chimp pound away at the keyboard and send out the fucking Dancing Liberal Biases every night. Then it will cry and hug you and recommend a book about a suburban woman's struggle with Lyme disease. See how you like it, America!

Please, Academy, I'll be good. Give it to John Stewart, or Ben Stiller, or Eddie Murphy, or Conan O'Brian, or Chris Rock, or Letterman again, or David Cross and Bob Oedenkirk, or... Billy Crystal, or Dave Barry, or John Goodman, or Cameron Diaz, or ANYBODY ELSE IN THE WHOLE WORLD. Please. I always watch the Oscars, and I don't want to let the bastards win.

You don't need me to tell you the Onion is funny, but... hey! The Onion is funny! Huzzah, Onion!

Charlie Toft was kind enough to comment on a post and help prove my theory that, as in a poetry reading or open-mike stand-up night, every single, solitary person who reads my blog has one of their own. He has an Oscar recap here.

I was inspired to write by his comment about Robert Redford. As it happens, Robert Redford is the only really famous person I've ever met. He spoke at my college graduation, and I got to introduce him. When I went to shake his hand... not to be impolite, but he looked like hell, with deep, deep crevices all over his face. I assumed that he must have needed a ton of makeup to appear in a movie nowadays.

However, when I looked at a picture of the two of us, taken with my own camera, he looked great. He looked at least 30 years younger, just like the movie star we've all seen. It made me believe that the camera really does love some people; it's not just a phrase.

Matt Welch talks about the story behind the Academy Award-winning documentary "Murder on a Sunday Morning." Welch, as always, has his moral compass screwed on straight:

Take a gander at this wretched exchange, care of Jacksonsville’s Channel Four news:

"Channel 4's Brad Puffer asked the state attorney officials if they were concerned about the impression the documentary could leave on a national or international audience.

"Anytime there's something that paints Jacksonville in something that's less than positive, you're obviously going to be concerned," Assistant State Attorney Jay Plotkin said."

Jay, you need to be impeached. Anytime one of your own freakin’ constituents gets shafted by lying public officials while the real murderer walks around free, that’s when you should be “concerned.”

I didn't see this: when the Bush administration handed over the documents about Dick Cheney's energy task force, they blanked out most of the papers.

Of the nearly 5,000 documents obtained by Judicial Watch, most of the internal communications were heavily redacted, often with only the names of the sender and recipient, and a subject heading, left readable, said Larry Klayman, the group's chairman.

(a) I'm no lawyer, but if I was trying to define "contempt of court" to an alien, I might come up with an example like this.
(b) I might use it for "Nixonian", as well.

Does the National Review care about truth? In this piece by Stanley Kurtz, I found two distortions/ lies right away:

"Steve Emerson's American Jihad, an exposé of Islamic terrorist organizations in America by an author deemed politically incorrect until 9/11, is at fourteen on the list." This is listed as one of the conservative best-sellers; God only knows why.

Steve Emerson was deemed politically incorrect? I knew that he was an accomplished journalist, but I hadn't heard that the all-powerful grip of political correctness had been hurting his career with the liberal media. Let's look at his bio, to see what Mr. Kurtz means, shall we?

"Mr. Emerson started The Investigative Project in late 1995, following the broadcast of his documentary film, "Jihad in America," on Public Television. The film exposed video of clandestine operations of militant Islamic terrorist groups on American soil. For the film, Mr. Emerson received numerous awards including the George Polk Award for best television documentary, one of the most prestigious awards in journalism. He also received the top prize from the Investigative Reporters and Editors Organization (IRE) for best investigative report in both print and television for the documentary. The award from the IRE was the fourth such award he had received from that group. The documentary, which was excerpted on 60 Minutes, is now standard viewing for federal law enforcement and intelligence organizations...

Mr. Emerson is the 1997 recipient of the Middle East Forum’s Albert J. Wood Public Affairs Award, which “honors individuals who have made important contributions to the attainment of peace in the Middle East and who have enhanced American understanding of that turbulent region"... In previous years, Mr. Emerson earned three top investigative journalism awards from the Investigative Reporters and Editors for the best national investigative reporting in books and magazines...

Between 1990 and 1993, Mr. Emerson served as a special investigative correspondent for CNN where he broke many international stories. He has also served as a senior editor for U.S. News & World Report...

Mr. Emerson's newest book is American Jihad, The Terrorists Living Among Us (Simon and Schuster, 2002). He has authored or co-authored four other books: Terrorist: The Inside Story of the Highest-Ranking Iraqi Terrorist Ever to Defect to the West (Villard/Random House, 1991); The Fall of Pan Am 103: Inside the Lockerbie Investigation (Putnam, 1990); Secret Warriors: Inside the Covert Military Operations of the Reagan Era (Putnam, 1988); and The American House of Saud: The Secret Petrodollar Connection (Franklin Watts, 1985). (Both Terrorist and The Fall of Pan Am 103 were excerpted as cover stories for The New York Times Magazine.)"

This guy is so conservative that he wrote two books about corruption and covert military operations in the Reagan era. It's a good thing that we have alternative conservative media outlets like CNN, the New York Times, public television, U.S. News and World Reports, and 60 Minutes, so that important investigative journalists can continue their important work, free from the evil tentacles of liberals.

Second lie or distortion from Kurtz:

"Brock's book is so vile that even liberal reviewers seem embarrassed by it."

Todd Gitlin, Los Angeles Times
"Anyone wishing to understand America in the 1990s will have to read his book."

Michael Tomasky, The Nation
"....the writing has about it the tenor of veracity and candor. Brock comes clean on things he has no contemporary motive to come clean on..."

Steve Neal, Chicago Sun Times
"Brock draws vivid portraits of his contemporaries in the conservative movement, from the hypocritical Newt Gingrich to the sloppy Matt Drudge and socialite Arianne Huffington, who padded her syndicated column by writing down the thoughts of others at cocktail parties."

Andrew Milner, Philadelphia City Paper
"Blinded by the Right is a terrific personal account of the seamier side of American political life."

Hendrik Hertzberg, The New Yorker, 3/11/02
"... an astounding account of fin-de-siecle Washington politics."

Eric Alterman, The Nation, 3/25/02.
"...everything we thought about these bozos in the vast right-wing conspiracy turns out to be true and then some."

You're free to disagree with these people, but I don't see anything, anywhere, that looks like liberals disgusted by a "vile" book.

From Today's Papers in Slate:

The WP and the WSJ front, the LAT reefers, and the NYT ignores news that the U.S. Department of Energy has released 11,000 documents relating to the creation of the Bush administration's energy policy, which in the WSJ's 1st paragraph and the WP's 16th paragraph, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham says, proves the policy was derived from "all viewpoints." The reason for the WP's low placement may stem from its disbelief: "Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham met with 36 representatives of business interests and many campaign contributors while developing President Bush's energy policy, and he held no meetings with conservation or consumer groups, documents released last night show."

Well, at least he didn't have coffee with them like bad old Clinton. That would be corrupt. Instead, he just let his campaign contributors draw up energy legislation to order, while avoiding any group who might represent the actual constituents of the United States.

Now that's funny.

I started to write about the Oscars, then realized I was even boring myself. In short- Whoopi bad, Moulin Rouge very bad, In the Bedroom robbed, myopic focus on race of movie stars bad, let's have a five year cooling-off period for Oscars movies about mentally ill people.

I also watched Ghost World this weekend and thought it was fantastic. My fiancee had an interesting thought about the ending, which I'd be interested in sharing. But I don't want to ruin the ending if you haven't seen it, so I'll put it in the comments.

Check out the Online Newspaper Gazette. Some headlines:

Fans To Leno, It's OK To Be Funny Now
Faith Saves Woman From Act Of God
12 Killed When Man Finds Wrong Way To Eat A Reese's
Tom Clancy still pretending he know things about war

Eve Tushnet, who is kind enough to blogwatch me, asks about studies of "liberal bias" vs. "conservative bias" in the media:

"I've now read descriptions of studies that claim to use the exact same methods and reach exactly opposite conclusions. Either somebody's lying, or I'm missing something. People with more time/interest in this stuff: What's up?"

I watch this stuff, and I haven't seen anyone use exactly the same methodology. But, I have seen people use similar methodology and come up with opposite results. For example, Patrick Ruffini finds that Jesse Helms is called conservative more often than Ted Kennedy is called liberal at two papers, the New York Times and the Washington Post. Professor Nunberg tries a similar study with a larger sample (Senators Lott and Helms, John Ashcroft, and Representatives Dick Armey and Tom Delay as conservatives, vs. Senators Boxer, Wellstone, Harkin, and Kennedy, and Representative Barney Frank as liberals) in a larger sample of newspapers (30 newspapers, then just the NY Times, Washington Post, and the LA Times). He finds that liberal figures are more often labeled than conservative ones.

So what's up? I don't think anyone is lying, just showing selection bias. If Patrick Ruffini had tried a larger sample than just Kennedy vs. Helms, he might have found that liberals were more often labeled than conservatives. I doubt that he would have blogged those results, as they contradict the liberal media theory he's supporting. Similarly, if Nunberg had searched the database and found that, indeed, conservatives are more often labeled than liberals, he wouldn't have a contrarian study to talk about on Fresh Air. It would have died there.

I don't want to accuse anyone of anything. I like Nunberg's methodology better than Ruffini's, but then, I would, wouldn't I? Having said that, though, it seems likely that it would be possible to pick some sample of liberals and some sample of conservatives to give you any result that you want.

Personally, I tend to find arguments about the "liberal media" unsatisfying. There's just so much dang media out there, with bias to the left, right, up and down. Too often, it reminds me of someone arguing that water is cold, and proving it by pointing to some cold water they just saw.