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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: maried. who wrote (213318)	12/29/2001 7:56:19 PM
From: gao seng	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

I think that the power to shape public opinion also makes a big difference, and the media is biased, to the point of irrational hatred of Republicans, as that article showed. But, the tide is turning. -- Who says there's media bias? William Rusher To a conservative, the question of whether the media are biased in favor of liberalism is right up there with the burning question of whether the sun rises in the East. Their bias is so obvious, and has been demonstrated statistically so many times, and (for that matter) has been admitted so often by members of the media themselves, that it's hard to believe the issue is still open for debate. And yet, the reigning monarchs of the media, both print and electronic, suavely and unanimously deny that they have any bias whatever. Their whole lives, they tell us, are dedicated to the search for objective truth, and anyone who charges otherwise is merely revealing his own bias. This leaves a conservative with only two choices: (1) To assume that the overwhelming majority of people in the media are so smugly self-satisfied that they genuinely believe their bulging portfolio of liberal opinions is in fact the simple truth about the topics in question. (2) Or to assume that they are lying through their teeth. Personally, I belong to the school that thinks they are lying through their teeth. Conceivably, there are one or two pompous windbags in the journalism business who are so full of themselves that they actually believe their steady output of liberal bushwah is simply the product of old-fashioned journalistic enterprise, refined in the white-hot kiln of their hard-earned wisdom. But the average New York Times reporter or NBC anchorperson is under no such illusion. He or she knows exactly what he or she is doing when describing the Heritage Foundation as "conservative," while leaving the Brookings Institution uncharacterized, or calls a Republican proposal a "scheme" and its Democratic rival a "plan." These people have been doing this sort of thing so long that it doesn't even bother them. The statistical evidence that members of the media are far to the left of general public opinion is overwhelming. As long ago as 1981, a painstaking study by Robert Lichter and Stanley Rothman established that never less than 80 percent of the media elite voted Democratic in the presidential elections of 1964, 1968, 1972, and 1976. What's more, 54 percent described themselves as "left of center," and only 19 percent as "right of center." In pure theory, of course, these people could keep their leftist bias out of their reportage. But they don't, as some of them across the years have incautiously conceded. Thus, the late William A. Henry III of Time magazine admitted, "We're unpopular because the press tends to be liberal, and I don't think we can run away from that." And CBS correspondent Bernard Goldberg, writing in the Wall Street Journal several years ago, was even blunter: "The old argument that the networks and other 'media elites' have a liberal bias is so blatantly true that it's hardly worth discussing anymore." Mr. Goldberg hung on at CBS for several years after that impolitic admission, but was finally eased out. Now he has written a whole book, titled "Bias" (Regnery Publishing, 2001), on the subject, and it is well worth the time of anybody who still somehow manages to hang onto a belief in the media's objectivity, or who would simply like a few fresh illustrations of how they tilt the pinball machine. Is there any likelihood the media will recognize their bias and reform? I doubt it very much. The truth is that they have too much contempt for conservatives to feel any obligation to play fair with them, and they get too much satisfaction out of doing their small bit for liberal causes and leaders to stop doing it. But the American people caught on to their game years ago and hold them in appropriately low esteem. And now, at long last, cable TV networks and radio talk shows are beginning to break the monopoly that these arrogant liberal "journalists" long held on the airwaves. So, better times are ahead. washingtontimes.com

To: maried. who wrote (213318)	12/30/2001 4:37:06 AM
From: KLP	Respond to of 769670

Some people don't remember ...we are a "Democracy in a Republic".... and thought you'd find it interesting to see this: The 106th Congress reaffirms the United States of America as a republic...Dec 4, 2000!!!! 106th CONGRESS 2d Session electioncenter.org H. CON. RES. 443 Expressing the sense of the Congress in reaffirming the United States of America as a republic. IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES December 4, 2000 Mr. PAUL (for himself, Mr. STUMP, Mr. METCALF, and Mr. SANFORD) submitted the following concurrent resolution; which was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CONCURRENT RESOLUTION Expressing the sense of the Congress in reaffirming the United States of America as a republic. Whereas the form of government secured by the Declaration of Independence, the American Revolution, and the Constitution of the United States is a republic--not a democracy; Whereas the Nation's founders understood that pure `democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths' (Federalist No. 10); Whereas throughout the 224-year history of the United States as an independent and sovereign nation, the people of the United States have never exercised power as a democracy; Whereas the people of the United States have always acted by and through the Federal Union of the several States, electing Members of Congress from each of the several States and the President and Vice President by electoral votes proportioned to the number of Members of Congress representing each State; Whereas in the 2000 election for choosing electors for President and Vice President, it appears that the President-elect and Vice President-elect have won a majority of the State electoral vote, but not a plurality of the nationwide popular vote; Whereas the prospect of electing to office a President and Vice President who did not win the largest number of popular votes has generated proposals calling for a constitutional amendment to provide for the direct popular election of the President and Vice President; Whereas such a national popular election for President and Vice President disregards the constitutional integrity and inviolability of the 50 States as independent and sovereign governments; Whereas in their foresight and wisdom, the people of the United States, meeting by representation in State conventions, adopted a national Constitution preserving the independence and equal standing of the 50 States; Whereas the Federal system of equal and independent States is an essential safeguard against shifting wills of the majority overriding the unchanging rights of the minority; Whereas to preserve the rights of the minority from a tyranny of the majority, the Constitution of the United States struck a principled balance between the people of the most populous States and the people of the least populous States; Whereas to that end, the Constitution of the United States provides that the legislatures of each of the several States, without interference from Congress or any other branch of the Federal Government or State governments, determine the manner of election of the President and the Vice President by State electors from each State; Whereas the number of electors is distributed in accordance with each State's representation in the House of Representatives and in accordance with each State's equal standing in the Senate, not by a direct nationwide election in accordance with population alone; Whereas the constitutionally prescribed system in the 2000 election for choosing electors for President and Vice President continues to function as originally designed, protecting minority and States' rights from the exercise of majority power; and Whereas the electoral college system thereby preserves the diversity of the American people and maintains the United States as a Federal republic--not as a democracy: Now, therefore, be it Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring), That it is the sense of the Congress that the United States is not a democracy--but a republic--and that the present constitutionally prescribed means by which the President and Vice President are selected State by State is essential to preserving the diversity of the citizenry of the United States and to maintaining the United States as a Federal republic composed of independent and sovereign States.