On MLK Day, Times Suggests Bush Bad for Black Voting Rights
 

     The Times commemorates Martin Luther King day in its usual way, by making it a Bush-bashing holiday.

     Back in 2004, reporter Jeffrey Gettleman lit into Bush for going to Atlanta to mark the day. Here are some excerpts from Gettleman’s January 15, 2004 report:

     "Many of Atlanta's civil-rights leaders are outraged about Mr. Bush's planned visit to commemorate Dr. King's 75th birthday and are using the occasion for protests. Already, they have marched with bullhorns, signs and thumping drums, shouting for the president to stay away....Many demonstrators asked how Mr. Bush, who pushed for war in Iraq, could champion Dr. King, who stood for nonviolent resistance....When President Clinton came in 1996, he received a standing ovation. But this presidential visit will be different. It seems to have lifted the lid on long-simmering anger many blacks feel toward Mr. Bush. Some Bush policies, including tax cuts mainly benefiting those with higher incomes and cutting back on welfare-type programs, have alienated black voters, analysts say."

     Tuesday’s story by Richard Stevenson isn't so blatantly slanted. But halfway into “Bush Salutes Memories Of 2 Civil Rights Leaders,” we get this:

     “For Mr. Bush, who started his day with a trip to the National Archives to see the Emancipation Proclamation, the events had clear political undertones. He has long harbored hopes of breaking the grip of the Democratic Party on the loyalty of black voters. But whatever progress he may have made in his first term suffered a setback in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, when he was widely criticized as failing to respond urgently to a natural disaster that fell with particular ferocity on poor blacks.”

     Stevenson brings up two outside issues to suggest the administration isn’t good for blacks.

     “But his administration has come under fire from some critics for taking what they consider a lax attitude toward voting rights. The Justice Department acknowledged last month that top officials had overruled a finding by the department's civil rights staff in 2003 that a Texas redistricting plan that helped gain Republicans seats in the House would violate voting rights laws. And Mr. Bush's nominee for the Supreme Court seat being vacated by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr., came under questioning at his confirmation hearings last week over his description of himself in 1985 as a critic of the ‘one person one vote’ precedents set by the Supreme Court.”

     Actually, Stevenson’s incidents arguably cancel each other out. After all, the Texas redistricting plan resulted in an increase in Republican congressmen, a result which more closely matched the voting preferences of Texans.

     The Washington Times demonstrated the inequity of the original Texas districting in a December 18 editorial, demonstrating how Texas Democrats managed to remain the majority in the state delegation despite being outvoted.

     “In 1998, Republicans demonstrated their statewide appeal by re-electing George W. Bush as governor and by simultaneously capturing control of 100 percent of the Texas' 27 statewide elective offices. Nevertheless, an incumbent-protecting, gerrymandered redistricting process following the 2000 census predictably produced a 17-15 Democratic majority in Texas' delegation to the U.S. House in the 2002 elections, despite the fact that Republican candidates cumulatively received 21 percent more votes than their Democratic opponents.”

     It can be argued that the Republican reapportionment the Times found so controversial actually resulted in Texas getting closer to the ideal of “one person one vote.”

     The Birmingham News explains the concept: “The 41-year-old ruling in Reynolds v. Sims established the principle of ‘one man, one vote’ by ordering Alabama's legislative districts nearly equal in population. The decision ended the political advantage of sparsely populated rural areas over more populated urban areas, a situation that evolved over the 60 years when the district lines were not adjusted for population changes.”

     (Note how the Alabama paper uses the original, politically incorrect phrasing “one man one vote,” instead of the “one person one vote” formulation used by the New York Times.)

For more Stevenson, click here.

Latest NSA Lead Story? Much Ado About Not Much, Two Liberals Say
 

     It took four reporters (Lowell Bergman, Eric Lichtblau, Scott Shane and Don Van Natta Jr.) to report out Tuesday’s lead story, “Spy Agency Data After Sept. 11 Led F.B.I. To Dead Ends.” But two liberal commentators doubt it adds up to much.

     The Times begins: “In the anxious months after the Sept. 11 attacks, the National Security Agency began sending a steady stream of telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and names to the F.B.I. in search of terrorists. The stream soon became a flood, requiring hundreds of agents to check out thousands of tips a month. But virtually all of them, current and former officials say, led to dead ends or innocent Americans. F.B.I. officials repeatedly complained to the spy agency that the unfiltered information was swamping investigators. The spy agency was collecting much of the data by eavesdropping on some Americans' international communications and conducting computer searches of phone and Internet traffic. Some F.B.I. officials and prosecutors also thought the checks, which sometimes involved interviews by agents, were pointless intrusions on Americans' privacy.”

     The Times has some disgruntled FBI sources displeased with all the extra work: “President Bush has characterized the eavesdropping program as a ‘vital tool’ against terrorism; Vice President Dick Cheney has said it has saved ‘thousands of lives.’ But the results of the program look very different to some officials charged with tracking terrorism in the United States. More than a dozen current and former law enforcement and counterterrorism officials, including some in the small circle who knew of the secret program and how it played out at the F.B.I., said the torrent of tips led them to few potential terrorists inside the country they did not know of from other sources and diverted agents from counterterrorism work they viewed as more productive.”

     But Eric Umansky in his “Today’s Papers” column for Slate argues: “Fair enough. But ‘few’ isn't none: Were some al-Qaida actually nabbed because of the program? Or is it, perhaps, just sloppy, CYA writing by the Times?”

     Kevin Drum of the liberal Washington Monthly, who opposes the NSA program, adds that “For what it's worth, I wouldn't get too excited….Aside from the fact that the whole thing smells pretty strongly of a bureaucratic turf war, the effectiveness of the program just isn't a big issue.”

     From the other side, Captain’s Quarters  finds it to be “yet another self-contradictory follow-up that points out yet again the bias of the reporters at the heart of the story, and perhaps the bias of their sources as well. The Risen/Lichtblau story gets thinner and thinner even as the editors of the Gray Lady do their best to dress it up.”

To read the full lead story on the FBI-NSA turf war, click here.

 “Plantation” Flap No Gaffe for Hillary
 

     No worries about Sen. Hillary Clinton’s “plantation” gaffe on Martin Luther King day, according to chief Hillary- hailer Raymond Hernandez, in Tuesday’s “At King Event, Mrs. Clinton Denounces G.O.P. Leadership.”

     “Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, speaking yesterday at a ceremony honoring the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., compared the Republican-controlled House of Representatives to a plantation where dissent is not tolerated. Her comments, made before a predominantly black audience at the Canaan Baptist Church of Christ in Harlem, drew a harsh response from national Republicans, but black leaders came to her defense.”

     A headline in the liberal-leaning New York Daily News headline, by contrast, suggests Hillary goofed: “A Blunder for Clinton?”

     Here’s some more of Clinton’s speech the Times left on the floor, blasting Republicans: "We have a culture of corruption, we have cronyism, we have incompetence. I predict to you that this administration will go down in history as one of the worst that has ever governed our country."

     A Clintonite talking about the corruption and cronyism of someone else’s administration would seem to provide ample set-up for a dose of hypocrisy-bashing, but the Times has always been blind to Hillary Clinton’s liberal politics and ethical controversies.

     The paper also ignores other Clinton corruption, as MRC chairman Brent Bozell points out in a recent column. “Clinton’s 2000 Senate committee agreed to pay a $35,000 fine to the Federal Election Commission for under-reporting the cost of a Hollywood fundraiser by more than $720,000. This is no tiny boo-boo in oversight. In fact, understating the fundraiser’s budget was essential to enable Hillary to hoard more ‘hard money’ dollars in the late months of the campaign. To an ethical midget, the game was clear: cheat now, win the seat, pay a tiny fine later, and watch the liberal media whisper right past it.”

For Hernandez’s small story in full, click here.