Fred Thompson Could Replace Cheney as VP

Dallasblog.com | Sam Merten:

“Rumors are running wild about a GOP plan to oust Vice President Dick Cheney and replace him with former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson in an attempt to salvage the end of Bush’s presidency and prep Thompson as Bush’s successor.”

Ed Cognoski responds:

Sounds more like a rumor designed to boost Thompson's chances in the Republican primaries than something that has a snowball's chance in hell of actually happening. The kind of rumor that Dallas Blog would pick up on and give big play to. Like Cheney himself, Dallas Blog doesn't even make a pretense of being fair and balanced. Yesterday, Sam Merten had this to say about another Republican candidate:

"McCain has no shot and should get out of the race. He's a disgrace to the party."

P.S. Tom Pauken is still blocking me from commenting on Dallas Blog itself.

The Hypocrisy of Hillary Clinton and John Edwards

Dallasblog.com | Tom Pauken:

“Leading Democratic candidates for President, John Edwards and Hillary Clinton, have made the growing divide between the rich and the poor in America a major centerpiece of their respective presidential campaigns. Both of them have tried to position themselves as spokespersons for the beleaguered American middle class.”

Ed Cognoski responds:

Mr Pauken buries the lede. After seven long paragraphs of whining that some rich Democrats happen to be running for President, Mr Pauken finally gets to his point, namely that we ought to consider a border-adjusted tax. By that time, most readers probably bailed out.

P.S. True to form, Mr Pauken wields his heavy censor's hand, deleting the above comment from the Dallas Blog story and blocking further comments from me. I guess when you are the reporter, editor and publisher of your own media outlet, you don't have to listen to journalistic suggestions from any quarter, including from your readers. ;-)

Free Speech and the Politician

Dallasblog.com | William Murchison:

“Free speech -- which means, to entirely too many self-styled liberals, 'Speech I agree with' -- won a modest victory this week in the U. S. Supreme Court.”

Ed Cognoski responds:

Mr Murchison highlights one SCOTUS decision, upholding corporate political advertising, and ignores the other two decisions, including the one where the Court ruled against the free speech rights of individual students. To Mr Murchison, free speech apparently means speech he agrees with.

The Dog that Saved Farmers Branch

Dallasblog.com | Brian J. Burns:

“Can a dog really save a city? Well, this one did. In June of 2006, my wife, Robin Bernier, started e-mailing members of the city council of Farmers Branch, Texas. ... She was e-mailing the council about the problems that the city, the state, and the country were having with illegal immigration. She found a friend through a steady sharing of information on the subject with City Councilman Tim O’Hare. Tim also told Robin about a dog in his neighborhood that wasn’t being treated well. His name was Merlin. Since 2002, Tim had watched this animal get very little attention from its masters, and was left out in the extreme heat and cold with very little shelter.”

Ed Cognoski responds:

The story gets even more heartwarming from there. How touching. Two xenophobes, separately working to evict illegal immigrants from their homes in Farmers Branch, are accidentally brought together out of sympathy for a homeless dog. Kudos to Dallas Blog for adding satire. I had to check the masthead to make sure I wasn't reading The Onion.

Obama: Right has 'hijacked' religion

DallasNews Religion | Bruce Tomaso:

“Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, speaking Saturday to the national meeting of the United Church of Christ, said some right-wing evangelical leaders have used religion to cause divisiveness. 'Somehow, somewhere along the way, faith stopped being used to bring us together and faith started being used to drive us apart,' he said.”

Ed Cognoski responds:

I'm puzzled by Obama's remarks. He's running as a new kind of politician, but picking on evangelicals is old left politics. If he gets the nomination, he'll need religious voters of all persuasions, so why pick fights if he doesn't have to?

Maybe this is a sign that he's worried he won't get the nomination unless he starts exploiting some wedge issues that Clinton isn't going to want to touch (for the same reason given above). Maybe he's not a new kind of politician after all. Or maybe he's willing to speak the truth no matter what its impact on his chances. Now that would be a new kind of politician.

AG Obtains Voter Fraud Conviction

Dallasblog.com | Will Lutz:

“During the debate over the voter ID bill, critics claimed that voter fraud was a myth and convictions are uncommon. Atty. Gen. Greg Abbott's office, however, has convinced a Jackson County jury to return a conviction on a voter fraud charge.”

Ed Cognoski responds:

A win for justice. The system works. This case demonstrates that we don't need to make it harder for the rest of us to vote in order to catch the rare bad guy.

Secular viewpoint in newsrooms

DallasMorningViews | Rod Dreher:

“Newsrooms are so overwhelmingly liberal and secular that they perceived liberal secularity as normal. ... I wish journalists would start regarding secularity not as the default worldview, but rather as a worldview just like any other. It would make for more accurate, less biased coverage.”

Ed Cognoski responds:

Secularity may be another worldview, but it is not "just like any other." What Mr Dreher fails to appreciate is that the Founding Fathers of America chose secularity for the official viewpoint of the United States government. It's all well and good for individuals to practice Catholicism or Protestant evangelism or even Islam or Mormonism or any of a hundred other variants of religion, but the United States government was ordered to remain neutral.

It shouldn't be surprising that the popular press, intending to reach a broad audience, might adopt a similar attitude. Bias towards a secular viewpoint may be bias still, but a bias towards secularity is the only bias that gives all the religious-based viewpoints equal access to the public square. News media that choose a secular viewpoint ought to be not only aware of that bias, as Mr Dreher suggests, but proud of it.

Why people don't like us

FrontBurner | Reid Slaughter:

“Those of [Dallas Morning News intern] Matthew Haag's generation have an unprecedented desire for fame and attention (hence, My Space, Facebook, Xanga, etc.). This young reporter, whose heart may be exactly in the right place, doesn't realize how his thrill at a front page by-line is appalling to a public who cares more about the subject than the messenger. The day that journalism becomes more a path to stardom than a vocation of serving one's fellow man is the day we are finished.”

Ed Cognoski responds:

I was with Mr Slaughter until the last few words. I'm a regular reader of Frontburner, and it's never occurred to me that "serving one's fellow man" is on the minds of any of the bloggers there. Snarky has always seemed more descriptive of what they're trying to achieve. I think Trey Garrison was closer to the mark when he hinted that his objection to the DMN interns was based on an urge he just couldn't suppress to "pick on interns because they're all young, stupid and need to get off my lawn."

In Defense of the Dallas Morning News

Dallasblog.com | Carolyn Barta:

“As a DMN reporter and editor of election news and, at different times, one who worked for the editorial page, I feel compelled to respond to those who think the news department takes its cue from the editorial endorsements or, in any way, tries to bolster the candidate endorsed. Nothing could be further from the truth. The news department and editorial department work totally separate, and editorial stands do not impact news coverage. ”

Ed Cognoski responds:

If you hire like-minded people, you don't need memos going between the news department and the editorial department for them to reflect similar thinking. That's true whether you are talking DMN, Dallas Blog, or the Ellis County Press.

The news media that stand out are the ones that go out of their way to get diversity of thinking in all departments. But of course, diversity is itself a liberal value, so media that achieve diversity open themselves up to criticism from the right for being... yep, diverse.

D*mned if you do, d*mned if you don't.

Justice Run Amuck

Dallasblog.com | Tara Ross:

“In this country, prosecutors and judges are too often free to wield their power, with impunity, against American citizens.”

Ed Cognoski responds:

No, they aren't. They are all subject to the US Constitution, ultimately interpreted by the Supreme Court, which changes its mind with glacial slowness (although global warming has made that cliche outdated, hasn't it?). Roughly translated, Tara Ross is saying (again) that the US Constitution doesn't always support what she would like to see happen in courts.

P.S. Go read the Dallas Blog to find out what Ms. Ross' whine today is. I can't be bothered analyzing it.