Fishbowl DC has a startling report that seriously brings into doubt the independence and veracity of the journalistic arts. It seems that the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein appeared as a speaker at a closed door session of a gathering of Senate Democrat Chiefs of Staff last week, a move that, as Betsy Rothstein correctly notes, “blurs the lines between being a journalist and trying to sway politics.”

No one knows what Klein briefed the Democrat staffers about, but the whole episode raises eyebrows. How is it that a purported journalist is the one doing the briefing instead of the one getting briefed? As Rothstein notes, it is all very untoward.

Briefings for journalists covering Capitol Hill are usually the reverse of what transpired here. Lawmakers brief reporters. Aides brief reporters. Think tanks brief reporters. Think tanks brief aides. But reporters briefing aides? This is unheard of.

There is no other way to look at this but to see it as a journalist that is not being a “reporter” but a participant with an ideological motivation. Especially since this was an address given by Klein only to Democrats as opposed to a bipartisan gathering of Senate staffers.

This reflects badly on the entirety of journalism. There are already enough people out there that don’t trust journalists as far as they could throw them. This makes matters worse. The Washington Post really should cut their ties with this guy. He really brings suspicion upon everything they do.

It should be remembered that Ezra Klein was the founder and proprietor of the notorious “Journolist,” a secretive website message board upon which well known journalists colluded to push a liberal agenda while sounding out ways to attack conservatives. Once again making the lie that journalists are strictly interested in reporting the facts.

Klein shut down the Journolist soon after the Daily Caller’s exposées of its existence.

Before Barack Obama swore to uphold the Constitution and to protect Americans from enemies foreign and domestic, early warnings were pinging about like signals off a cell tower. Predictions: 1.) The economy would nosedive and 2.) America would have a renewed military presence in Africa before the end of Obama’s first term. What was not foreseen was the Obama administration’s fixation on “snitching.” They are for it. Obama brazenly initiated his report-on-your-neighbor, big brother initiative via a White House run “snitch website” called “flag.”

Detecting the distinctively foul objective of creating an Obama enemies list, Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) took to the Senate floor to accuse Obama of attempting to shut down political opposition. Cornyn also sent Obama a letter demanding to know the intent of the White House’s snitch site where Obamatrons could routinely rat-out their neighbors who disagreed with Obama’s policies. Main targets were those in opposition to Obamacare, the socialist medical overhaul that will wreck the American economy for decades if implemented. In the face of fascist-laden, unspoken threats of reprisal, red-blooded patriots from across the nation emailed the snitch site and turned themselves in as overt acts of defiance.

Yet, Obama tried it again. With sliding ratings and talk from neighborhoods to water coolers about his failed policies and socialist agendas eroding his base, “snitching” was resurrected. Snitches are now directed to “Attack Watch.” The Obama campaign essentially put Americans on notice: Written criticism or verbally attacking Obama under your 1st Amendment right of freedom of speech is an affront to the regime and could get you reported. Again, patriots across the land mocked the site by reporting “themselves” in further defiance of the site’s intended intimidation and implied retribution.

Attempts to snuff out political dissent have a long history. Obama’s propensity for it puts him in an unsavory club of notorious politicians turned tyrants who cast fear into their opposition and ran their nation by edict or currently, in Obama’s case, by executive order. Politician-turned-tyrant occurs when the people allow the usurpation of power to go unchecked. Obama’s radical abuse of the U.S. Constitution and overriding of the legislative authority of Congress would have our founding fathers boldly decrying a tyranny in the making. Snitching coupled with President Obama wanting his own militia, as well-funded and as powerful as the U.S. military, must give all Americans pause. Weakening America’s military is a standing Socialist goal. The coup d’état is that the Obama militia and U.S. military would report to the same Commander-in-Chief. Prediction #3: Action to establish a presidential/civilian militia will be fast-tracked — should Obama and a majority of his Progressive Democrat Party be reelected in 2012.

In tandem with #3, is Prediction #4 for 2012. Informed minds know that John Kennedy entered the Vietnam War with advisors, a pattern Obama now repeats in Africa. The U.S. military can be weakened or bled-out of funding and personnel in areas of the world such as Africa, where no security threat to the U.S. currently exists. If reelected, Obama’s expansion into Africa is imminent. Having American troops in the region makes Africa a magnet for America’s enemies.

Political leaders turned tyrants, that are armed with civilian militias and legions of snitches used to subdue dissent from the people, fill the history books with names like Stalin, Mao, Hitler and others who began as benign Socialist or Marxist politicians. It is history that exposes or demands comparisons with Obama’s policies. Those tyrants started with civilian militias loyal to them and not the citizenry. Snitching or informing was first encouraged and then government mandated. For some, snitching on their neighbor meant survival for themselves and their families — for a while. In the book, Darwin’s Racists – Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, pages 54-56, there is a telling account by Russian Nobel Laureate Alexander Solzhenitsyn of the brutal results of “snitching” that denied the Soviet citizenry’s’ right to criticize its government.

Prediction #5: The mainstream media will continue to ignore such threats until they realize that their rights to freedom of the press have also been overrun by government edict. Historically, it is the fate of all journalists in Socialist countries worldwide. Snitching is an equal opportunity offender. Though the Black community faces ostracizing by other Blacks if they speak negatively about the destructive policies of the first Black President, many have rejected what they call un-American activities and an assault on freedom and have also turned themselves in to “Attack Watch” in defiance and defense of their Constitutional freedoms.

A government that asks its citizens to snitch on one another cannot itself be trusted. Snitching is about controlling the opposition and eventually the entire populace. The end result is that a penalty is levied whether through suppression of speech or oppression of a people. It is divisive and ultimately dangerous, especially in the hands of leaders with delusions of grandeur or narcissistic personality disorders. Snitching is the worm that decays and weakens a society in preparation for the rot of Socialism and tyranny. Why is it again, that Obama wants Americans to snitch?

Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann was at the center of an unusual campaign moment on Friday that involved reporters trying to ask her questions – and the Republican presidential candidate essentially being cocooned by a ring of protectors.

Because that has never happened before in the history of politics as a politician tries to move through a crowd to get to where he or she is going.

And the next part is a video of Don Lemon supposedly be shoved out of the way, followed by two videos, neither of which provides any proof to Lemon’s assertion

At issue: a scene that unfolded after the Republican presidential candidate briefly spoke at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines.

After talking for about three minutes, Bachmann waded into the crowd filled with adoring supporters.

Moments later, as she tried to exit the area back to a waiting drive cart, Bachmann found herself in the middle of a mob of people: among them many supporters and members of the press including this reporter and CNN anchor Don Lemon.

As both CNN staffers tried to question Bachmann, Lemon said he was pushed by two members of Bachmann’s staff. Lemon also said that Marcus Bachmann, the congresswoman’s husband, pushed him.

“She came out, after speaking for just a couple minutes,” Lemon said. “There were other reporters and cameras there. And I asked her very respectful questions: ‘How do you think you did in the debate last night?’ and ‘How do you think you’re going to end up in the Ames Straw Poll?’ And her two campaign aides started elbowing me.”

Perhaps you were, you know, in the way, and she was trying to get somewhere?

Maybe we should ask R.S. McCain, who was apparently right there in the mix (guy on the left in the fedora. Sorry, can’t get a clearer screenshot)

It has become commonplace to call the tea party faction in the House “hostage takers.” But they have now become full-blown terrorists.

It’s actually kind of surprising that the Politico would allow this kind of “un-civil” rhetoric, but, hey, in today’s news cycle, the biggest stories tend to be attention whore ones.

They have joined the villains of American history who have been sufficiently craven to inflict massive harm on innocent victims to achieve their political goals. A strong America has always stood firm in the face of terrorism. That tradition is in jeopardy, as Congress and President Barack careen toward an uncertain outcome in the tea party- manufactured debt crisis.

I distinctly remember many on the Left wanting to leave Afghanistan alone and, instead, sit back and consider what America did to tick al Qaeda off. Barack Obama was one of them.

As we stumble closer to Aug. 2, it has become clear that many in the tea party are willing to inflict massive harm on the American people to obtain their political objective of a severely shrunken federal government. Their persistence in rejecting compromise, even as the economic effects of the phony crisis they have created mount, has taken their radicalism beyond tough negotiating, beyond even hostage-taking.

So, if we apply the same “logic” (or, should that be, apoplexy?) to the Democrats, they are willing to inflict massive harm on the American people in order to continue spending more money to increase the size of the federal government and mortgage and destroy the future of our next generations.

As markets fall in anticipation that there may not be a timely resolution; as credit agencies issue dire warnings that the U.S. political system has become so dysfunctional that a credit downgrade may be inevitable, and as America looks weakened in the eyes of the world, the tea party’s hostage-taking has evolved into the intentional infliction of harm on innocent Americans to achieve a political objective – terrorism.

Terrorism is a tough term, but, unfortunately, it describes tea party tactics precisely. Their first step was to vow not to vote to raise the debt ceiling.

Whatever you say, sparky. But, tell me, William Yeomans, why should we listen to a man who “served as Sen. Ted Kennedy’s chief counsel on the Senate Judiciary Committee”? Didn’t it bother you to work for a man who ran away to create an alibi as a young woman was left in a car that was slowly sinking into a river, allowing her plenty of time to think about her coming death from drowning?

Anyhow, how do you respond to unhinged liberals? Well, I don’t see a need to give a juvenile rant an adult answer, so,

Oh, and you should probably try this, Will

Last weekend Americans For Prosperity once again held its RightOnLine conference, this year in beautiful downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota. Consequently, the Atlantic Magazine decided to do a report on what went on at RightOnLine. Unfortunately, the whole thing was filled with opinions stated as fact, misconstructions of facts, and outright lies. Sadly, along with the rest of the Old Media, it seems as if the veracity of The Atlantic has taken a hit in this bad Obama economy.

The Atlantic assigned third string reporter Tina Dupuy to handle the RightOnLine retrospective, apparently, if her reports are any indication, because she was already in town to cover Netroots Nation. Netroots Nation is the far left conference made famous by the Daily Kos and its YearlyKos conference. YearlyKos started in 2006 and was later re-branded as Netroots Nation in 2008.

As always the RightOnLine event was held at the same time and in the same city as this year’s left-wing extravaganza. AFP does this because, in AFP President Tim Phillips’ words, “to see the true nature of our opponents.”

In order to ingratiate herself with the Nutrooters, at the top of her piece the Atlantic’s Dupuy went right for the left’s favorite boogey men: the dreaded Koch Brothers. Dupuy lamented, “Why is there a giant Koch-funded conservative gathering at the same time and in the same city as Netroots Nation, anyway?”

The question is laced with a typical authoritarian, leftist mindset. Its base assumption seems to be a raise of the eyebrow that the conservative group would dare visit the same city at the same time as the Netrooters. With her very question Dupuy seems to be saying that the conservative groups should somehow not even be allowed to confront the Netrooters head on. It’s a travesty, a shock, an affront to the good Nutrooters, I guess.

Someone has neglected to tell Dupuy that in America conservatives don’t have to ask lefties for permission to hold a conference.

Dupuy’s very second paragraph incongruously hung another lefty trope onto her coverage of RightOnLine. Dupuy belabored the contrasting of RightOnLine and Netroots Nation by trying to say that AFP’s event is somehow like a crisis pregnancy center fooling young women into entering only to find themselves being pressured not to have an abortion.

It was an absurd and malapropos comparison, but good reporting wasn’t Dupuy’s goal. Showing her far left pals that she is one of the kool kids was.

After a few paragraphs about Netroots Nation, Dupuy discusses the costs of the two conferences. Netroots Nation costs its attendees “a staggering $355 per registration,” Dupuy tells us. Meanwhile, RightOnLine is only $120 per person.

Dupuy thinks she knows why this is true: it’s them gosh darn Koch Brothers, dontcha know!

Sponsored by the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, RightOnline benefits from the Foundation’s annual budget of $10 million, overseen by board chairman David Koch, of Koch Industries-fame. Netroots’ filings to the IRS show a budget of less than $1 million.

In short, the foundation putting on RightOnline has more than ten times the cash of the liberal tweeples two blocks away, making it easier to attend.

This is an amusing conceit but it utterly fails the test of good journalism. In fact, this is merely her opinion stated as fact. Dupuy did not offer a scintilla of proof that the Koch Brothers’ money makes RightOnLine cheaper to attend than Netroots Nation. She offered no comparative budgets, no analysis of speaking fees, no discussion of the costs of the various event venues… in short, she gave no proof at all that AFP’s association with the Koch Brothers made RightOnLine cheaper to attend. She just stated it as fact and that was that.

Thus we have a singular lie stated as fact.

Dupuy goes on to snark about some of the speakers at RightOnLine. Andrew Breitbart, as always, came in for some lefty hatred, as did the beautiful Michelle Malkin and videographer James O’Keefe. Dupuy was also unhappy that Michelle Bachmann and Tim Pawlenty had the gall to show up at an event in their home state.

Then came this garbled “fact” by the inimitable Dupuy:

Most tellingly, there’s what looks like a shrine to Sarah Palin, a 5-foot tall painting of the governor in the hallway of the event space.

Untrue. The painting, painted by patriotic artist Steve Penley, was actually a door prize for a lucky participant at RightOnLine. It had nothing to do with any “shrine.” But snarkily saying “Palin shrine” appealed to the extremists better than “door prize,” I guess. So, much for serious “reporting.”

Next we find Dupuy reporting a false “fact” and using that false fact as a cudgel with which to beat up the conservatives.

It’s a conference about being online but the attendees haven’t been tweeting very much. It’s maybe one every ten minutes on their chosen hashtag #ro2011 — compared to the Netroots twitter stream which has been a reliable geyser.

Wow, a conference based on Internet activism had no Internet action. That would be a major indictment if it were true. Naturally, it isn’t true. You see, the hash tag for RightOnLine was not #ro2011 as Dupuy reports. It was instead #ro11. No wonder Dupuy couldn’t find any Tweets about the conference. She wasn’t even looking in the right place.

Dupuy winds up her piece with something finally relevant to a discussion of two conferences — one from the right and one from the left — that have based their programs on Internet activism. She discusses the RightOnLine take on the badly named issue of Net Neutrality.

Of course, she gets the whole thing wrong. Her premise about Net Neutrality is, as she says Senator Al Franken says, “the most important free speech issue of our time.” Dupuy says this as if Al Franken is for freedom of speech on the Internet. This is untrue. Al Franken and the left-wingers at Netroots Nation want the Internet to be a wholly controlled and owned arm of the federal government. This would, we all understand, necessarily mean that the federal government would have the power to say who is allowed to speak on the Internet and will fully regulate what they say.

There is no “freedom” in complete government control of anything. But that is precisely what the left wants. They want to quash the freedom of invention, enterprise, and most especially the freedom of speech that has been the hallmark of the Internet to come to an end, mired in government red tape and iron-fisted control.

Why does the left want to do this to the Internet? Why else but to eliminate the voices that oppose them.

In fact, Dupuy’s hack report on RightOnLine is a perfect example of this. Instead of a report on RightOnLine, we got her left-wing opinion, we got garbled facts, and outright lies about the conservative conference all meant to ridicule and diminish what the folks at RightOnLine intended to do.

Now, what would have made Dupuy’s piece actually informative would have been a discussion of the real differences between the Nutrooters and RightOnLine. And there are quite a few.

Netroots Nation is chock full of some very wonky programs. The lefties drill down to the deepest Internet facts, figures, and capabilities. On the other hand, RightOnLine has since day one sufficed with Twitter 101, blogging 101, and other beginner’s programs meant to help their local activists learn how to use the Internet to further conservative ideas. RightOnLine has not made arcane wonkiness a part of its programs like Netroots Nation has. The fact is the two conferences are very different in character in this respect.

Dupuy’s piece failed nearly every test of good journalism. Sadly, this is what passes for journalism these days. No wonder the profession is dying.

Jill Singer

While Tony Abbott has previously lent support to schemes including an emissions trading scheme and a carbon tax, you wouldn’t know it today. The only real scheme he and supporters are currently backing is political interference.

It’s a dangerous game they’re playing with our future, but you’ve got to hand it to them, they’re ruddy good at it.

Cate Blanchett pops up her head to support a carbon tax and Abbott’s band of climate skeptics quickly lops it off because she’s richer than most.

But when Gina Rinehart pops hers up, Australia’s richest woman is touted as some kind of working-class hero.

Then there’s David Murray, chair of Australia’s $71 billion Future Fund and recipient of a $28 million golden parachute from his time running the Commonwealth Bank. Murray states there’s no link between global warming and carbon dioxide emissions because carbon dioxide is necessary for life, colourless and odourless – and therefore can’t be considered a pollutant. It’s a popularly held view.

Andy Semple of the Menzies Institute claims it’s “refreshing” for someone with Murray’s standing to take on the global warming “scam” by expressing such views.

Really? I’m prepared to keep an open mind and propose another stunt for climate skeptics – put your strong views to the test by exposing yourselves to high concentrations of either carbon dioxide or some other colourless, odourless gas – say, carbon monoxide.

You wouldn’t see or smell anything. Nor would your anti-science nonsense be heard of again. How very refreshing.

More HERE

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don’t forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here

Columbia University announced last week that its Graduate School of Journalism is awarding its highest award to America’s enemies, Al-Jazeera TV.

The university is awarding Al-Jazeera with its journalism award for the Arab-centric mid eastern “news” it has produced. Al-Jazeera is apparently being recognized for “singular journalism in the public interest.”

“Al Jazeera English has performed a great service in bringing the English-speaking world in-depth coverage of the turmoil in the Middle East,” said Nicholas Lemann, dean of Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism.

So, once again we have a leftist American university turning its back on America this time to award its top honors to a foreign TV service whose goal includes the daily denunciation of the United States of America.

One has to wonder if there were awards given by American universities for the Nazi Party’s newspapers or radio broadcasts during WWII? Were there great American awards given the U.S.S.R.’s Pravda or Izvestia during the Cold War, even? Yet here we are in the middle of a war between freedom, liberty, and democracy and the backwards, oppressive forces of radical Islam that Al-Jazeera represents and our publicly supported university is giving great awards to supporters of our enemy.

This is typical of the vapid thinking of the Democrat Party and America’s liberals. To them we are the evil that plagues the world. To them we are the monsters. To liberals our enemies need to be awarded and recognized as the better side of the argument.

Last week, Bill O’Reilly tackled this topic and made some great points.

Like all too many Americans TIME Magazine proves that it doesn’t know what is worth celebrating, noting, or memorializing in this world. Time doesn’t know what “important” means, it doesn’t know what “influential” means, it doesn’t even know what “top” means. And it has proven this again with its latest “2011 TIME 100 most influential people in the world.”

Let me just ask this: why is TV actress and comedienne Amy Poehler on a list of the “most influential people in the world”? It is idiotic. Ridiculously actor Colin Firth is also on the list.

Another actress, Blake Lively, a “B” actress at best, is on the list. Unbelievable. TIME has so little to say of this “most influential person” that barely a paragraph was offered about her. How influential can you be if your whole life can be summed up in a mere 65 words?

Mark Wahlberg is there? Yeah, the one-dimensional actor Mark Wahlberg is on this list for some crazy reason. Why? Who the heck knows?

Singer/songwriter Patti Smith is on the list, too. Evidently TIME thinks she’s still big stuff. What has she done since the 1970s again? One would be excused for imagining that she died 20 years ago she’s so disappeared from the greater cultural attention span.

Also on this absurd list is — and this should make anyone laugh out loud — MSNBC’s faux conservative Joe Scarborough.

Let’s take a look at the guffaw worthy addition of low-rated TV talker Scarborough, he of the extremist left-wing cabler MSNBC. Joe’s presence on this list is inexplicable, not just because he is a TV talking head but because he is one of TV’s lowest rated talking heads.

Now, being a TV (or radio) talking head does not disqualify someone for inclusion on such a list, exactly. For good or ill, being a major media figure most certainly can lead to wielding great influence. Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Bill O’Reilly are examples of current commentators that have quite a bit of influence. In his day so did Walter Cronkite. Even someone like Father Coughlin (for worse) during WWII days on radio or Edward R. Murrow (mostly not for worse) were highly influential TV/Radio folks of their day that were worthy for inclusion in such a list.

However, Joe Scarborough is not anywhere near as influential or successful as any of those I mentioned above. It is flat out ridiculous to call Joe Scarborough one of the world’s most influential people. It’s pure fantasy.

Listen, these people I just mentioned are fine people. Successful at their work, known well enough by people, sure. But does “acting” and being a TV talking head make a person one of the world’s most influential people? It is idiotic to say so.

It isn’t just the hollow actors, aging singers, and TV personalities that don’t belong on this list, either. Injured Representative Gabrielle Giffords is also on the list. Why? It’s hard to fathom.

Gabrielle Giffords has a compelling story, of course, but to the greater world she is known for nothing but being the victim of a crime. Before being shot she was a virtually unknown Congresswoman. Since her shooting she has yet to do anything especially noteworthy due to her necessary rehabilitation. Further, we have no real idea how that is progressing so we don’t even have her example as something that can inspire us. Maybe she will inspire us someday. I hope she does. But as of right now she is not a “most influential person.” As much as we feel for her and are pulling for her recovery she simply isn’t a major world figure.

There are all sorts of people on this list that don’t belong on a list as vaunted as the 100 most influential people of the world. Take Amy Chua, for instance. She wrote the controversial memoir Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. Yes her book is very interesting and yes she has gained a bit more than her allotted 15 minutes of fame. But as worthy as her book is, a most influential person of the world she is not.

Do these people deserve to be better known? I don’t know. I guess so. Why not? But are they worthy of being included in a list of the most influential people in the whole wide world? Nope. Not at all.

Anyway, you can look this list over and find all sorts of people that do not belong on it. It shows that TIME Magazine hasn’t a clue what “influential” really means. It shows how facile the thinking of this Old Media staple really is.

This past weekend the first national True The Vote Summit was conducted by the folks that successfully rooted out vote fraud in Harris County, Texas during the 2010 elections. Folks from 27 different states were in attendance to learn how the Harris County effort was conducted in hopes of replicating the same back home, but with the hard lessons already learned.

On Saturday those in attendance heard from True The Vote’s wizened members and learned what the best practices were to “true” the voting process in their own areas. Along with the True the Vote experts attendees also heard from the Wall Street Journal’s John Fund and election law expert Christian Adams. The day’s activities were wrapped up in a neat, if somewhat eccentric bow as those gathered heard an entertaining address by none other than our own Andrew Breitbart.

This event wasn’t just a rally cry for free and fair elections, though indeed it was that. TTV’s Mark Antill, Alan and Colleen Vera, Nancy Geigel, Vickie Pullen and the indefatigable Catherine Engelbrecht gave detailed information on how folks can set up their own poll watcher programs, told the summit goers how to keep the process free of partisanship, and discussed the ins and outs of the legal system they came up against when implementing their 2010 program. I even got a few minutes to let the folks know how to use the Internet and the New Media to help support their efforts back home.

But make no mistake about it. Despite what the left has said about this effort, their goal is not to inject a partisan agenda into our elections but to make sure that every election nation wide is free of fraud. Time and again TTV’s members told of how they worked hand in hand with Democrat poll watchers to make sure that everything was on the up and up during the elections.

Still this hasn’t stopped the left from whimpering.

I previously reported Friday’s events, but I waited until today to talk about Saturday’s events to see what the left-wing press would say about it all. They did, indeed take a few cheap shots as predicted.

The left ridiculed the event as filled with old folks, and cried because hard-core left-wing bloggers were not invited to cover the event.

It isn’t a surprise that the hardcore lefties were excluded, though. After the unfair and untrue attacks that TTV received at the hands of the far left in 2010, it isn’t surprising that they decided to make sure they could keep their minds on their organizing instead of fighting constant rearguard actions against the lies and calumnies of the far left. After all, these leftists don’t want free and fair elections. They want to be able to steal elections at will. Efforts like TTV’s threaten the left’s power to steal close elections as they have so many times.

The whining aside, it is a fact that everyone involved at the event are from the conservative side of the aisle. It is the contention of TTV that truing the vote is good for the right because vote fraud is nearly an exclusive crime of the left. But despite the fact that making sure our electoral system is free and fair for everyone might help destroy one of the left’s tools of stealing elections, it is truly a non-partisan goal to make sure that the integrity of our system is assured. The left should want free and fair elections as much as any other American.

In fact, as Hans Von Spakovsky, John Fund, and Christian Adams all said, making sure the polls have integrity even benefited the left during Obama’s election. Despite the left’s constant claims, the voter ID laws in Georgia and Indiana, for instance, didn’t oppress the vote for the Democrats. In fact, just the opposite occurred. Democrat voting doubled in Democrat districts in these two states with the strictest voter ID laws in the nation.

There was one uncomfortable incident at the summit, however. During the questions and answers period of John Fund’s keynote address someone stood and asked the Wall Street Journal’s resident vote fraud expert why he didn’t write more about the vote fraud faced by former GOP Senate candidate Joe Miller in Alaska.

Fund said that as a writer he has to make decisions on what he has time to cover and what he doesn’t. After all, there is only so much space and time. He then said that he also has to decide if candidates in the news calling out voter fraud really have a case or if it is all just “sour grapes” (his words).

… and here is the “uncomfortable” part. It just so happened that Joe Miller was in the room listening to Fund and it appears that Fund was not aware of Miller’s presence. Joe Miller leaped to his feet and asked for some time to “rebut” Fund’s claims of sour grapes. Miller proceeded to inform the folks about all the fraud that was not made common knowledge during the 2010 election.

After Miller had his say Fund countered by averring that he was not talking about Mr. Miller having “sour grapes,” but that he was just talking “in general terms.”

After Fund came an address by Christian Adams, known as the man in the Obama Justice Department that blew the whistle on the administration’s refusal to prosecute the obvious voter intimidation perpetrated by the New Black Panthers in Philadelphia during the 2008 election.

Adams gave a great address but one of the most important things he brought up was that there is a section of the Motor Voter law that demands that every state make sure that its voter rolls are clear of fraudulent voter registrations and are true rolls of actual voters. Adams informed us that the Democrats refuse to follow the law and carry out these required purges of illicit registrations.

He said that one of the things that could really shut down Democrat vote fraud is to enforce this provision. He hoped that groups could sue under this provision and force Democrats to obey the law.

Then came Andrew Breitbart in yet another whirlwind performance. I’ve seen Andrew speak half a dozen times, now, and his manic, near stream of consciousness speeches get better every time I hear them.

Breitbart’s address was less about vote fraud than the others and more about his bailiwick of the culture war in which we are engaged against the far left of Hollywood and the media. He’s a bulldog for fairness and for taking down the far left’s wall of propaganda. But he’s not a politics guy, he told us.

“I don’t care that much about politics, I don’t go on CNN or Fox to talk about politics, I care about the culture. We’ve allowed the cultural Marxists to take over our culture and I just want to expose some of what they do. I’m about exposing the mainstream media I’m about exposing Hollywood,” he said in quick time.

He told us that he started life as a liberal. This surprised some in the audience. Breitbart has become a conservative hero more by default than by device because the left has filled the news with so many lies and agenda driven personalities that he could stand it no more. Ultimately he became one of us.

It’s been 2 years since I joined the Tea Party movement, I first started as a defender of the movement but then after two years I realized that, hey, I’m one of you!

I am the only media mogul that has two car payments and a mortgage, I don’t have a private plane, I’m just like you guys!

Breitbart’s speaking style is filled with amusing anecdotes and a wonderful West Coast vernacular that gives a glimpse of that Hollywood world at which he rebels.

In fact, I’ll just post my quick notes of what he said giving you a bit of a taste of his flair.

Traveling across the county, I have a lot of time to think. One of the things I thought about was a basic observation of our culture. The media is our enemy. The media is at war with us. Observation one: the media is the problem. The media won’t report the stories of the day. So to get the real stories out we’ve all had to become the media. That’s what happens when people come to me and I post these stories.

Now if you’re from the Muslim Brotherhood and you want to donate to NPR, they love you.

So what’s the solution? We need to raze the mainstream media, we need to eliminate them. I want you to cheer when The New York Times fails. They choose to ignore the Tea Party movement, tell the media that “we’re sick and tired of the civil war you’ve declared on the American people.”

What if we created the Council on American Tea Party Relations, would they pay attention? No. We need to take them on. Your Harry Reids and Nancy Pelosis are the weak sisters without the media backing them up.

There is another thing I realized. The Tea Party movement is driven by the women. I come to these things and I get picked up by a woman and in the time I get from the airport to the hotel I learn more about what is going on here on the ground than I can even take in. It’s like they are the general Schwartzkophs of the movement.

But the women run the Tea Party because the media has made men today a point of attack. They are called racists, homophobes, haters. The men know the media is going to attack them. But the women run this movement and they say “I don’t care I’m going to save this country.”

It’s an unspeakable crime what the left and the media have done to families in the minority communities. Maybe that’s want they want? But we need to go into these communities and say we are here to help. The guilt is officially over. That is the weapon they’ve used to destroy us.

But these changes have come not at the hands from the Republican Party. They want the Tea Party to go away because its uncomfortable.

Now I helped create Huffington Post. I know, crazy, isn’t it? But what it has done is drive the Democrat Party further left. Even The New York Times has had to prove that they are left of center. We are moving toward a more British media culture of left and right media without this false assumption that the media is unbiased.

But the left’s goal is to shut you up. They want to destroy the people’s voice. Well WE are going to fight the Lamestream Media. You folks are the media, now. It’s about taking down the entire institutional left. They don’t control it all any more.

What better way to end the event than a wonderful rant from Andrew Breitbart?

I can’t think of any.

Me with Alaska’s Joe Miller

The New York Times is participating in the dissemination of the stolen State Department cables that have been made available to it in one way or another via WikiLeaks. My friend Steve Hayward recalls that only last year the New York Times ostentatiously declined to publish or post any of the Climategate e-mails because they had been illegally obtained. Surely readers will recall Times reporter Andrew Revkin’s inspiring statement of principle: “The documents appear to have been acquired illegally and contain all manner of private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye, so they won’t be posted here.”

So, the NY Times would not publish the ClimateGate documents which would damage their pet pseudo religion/cult, but, will stand up and publish material acquired illegally that contains all manners of private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye, material that can do serious damage to American interests around the world. Even though some of the material can hurt Obama, I suppose in Liberal World, damaging the United States’ standing is more important.

And, consider, from Anthony Watts

The NYT published details in 2005 about US efforts to eavesdrop on Al Qaeda, and is publishing info from the stolen Wikileaks Iraq messages, but they wouldn’t publish the ClimateGate emails.

Mr. Revkin, your selective bias, and the bias of your newspaper (and your Dot Earth Blog) is screaming loudly for all to hear.

Remember, all manner of Very Important People begged the Fish Wrap to not expose the “domestic wiretapping” (which was anything but) program, including high ranking elected Democrats. Nor was this the only secret operation the Times exposed. There was the terrorist finance tracking program, among others. Remember, Bill Keller, the Times’ public editor, wrote, regarding the decision to publish the finance story

It’s not our job to pass judgment on whether this program is legal or effective,………

Yet, they seemed to pass judgment when deciding to not publish the climategate material. Of course, like I wrote, the NY Times could care less about damaging the United States, especially when Bush was president, the other is about protecting a fake issue that would provide more power to government and redistribute wealth.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach. sit back and Relax. we’ll dRive!