In the Abramoffing

How superbly satisfying it was to watch the left-blogisphere put the screws to Deborah Howell. We often whine asking why it is that the same timid press that treats the Republicans with kid gloves, bending over backwards to achieve "fairness and balance" turn around to sieze upon meaningless faux-pas like the Dean Scream or Hilary's "plantation" remark to rake the Democrats over the coals. Do you know why? It's because we've not been vociferous complainers like the Republicans with their spurious charge of "liberal bias". The press have gotten conditioned to the fact that disrespect towards Republicans will unleash a firestorm in their general direction, while you can freely compare Michael Moore with Osama bin Ladin without too much of a backlash.

Well, as the usually mild-mannered Professor DeLong demonstrated, we can unleash a firestorm too, and we will, if the the press continues on its cowardly course of reaching for a false "balance" on the Abramoff scandal. An admission has been forced from Howell that the Abramoff scandal is indeed a Republican scandal. The response was so overwhelmingly negative that they made the terrible move of shutting down their comments on this issue, which I'm sure went over well with the blogger crowd they've been trying to court with their Technorati collaboration. Mike the Mad Biologist notes the interesting fact that one of the scathing comments that was pulled was signed "Karen Marriott" in which she informed the Post that "In order to avoid further loss, I have instructed my family's trust to end what has been a long and profitable relationship, and to take appropriate steps to eliminate our WPO holdings." A shareholder is pissed off. And from the sounds of it, not a twopenny one.

Better and better. It seems like there are pictures of Bush and Abramoff all chummy-like out there. The holder is keeping them back to encourage higher bidding, but I'm sure they'll see the light of day soon enough. You don't get to be a Pioneer without getting to press some flesh with the head puppet himself.