Slapping crying babies on airplanes is a bad idea, whether or not they're related to you

I guess Joe Ricky Hundley of Idaho hasn't been clued in to the fact that small children cry as airplanes descend to clear their ears and stabilize the pressure. When Jessica Bennett's 2-year old son started crying as the plane descended on a flight into Atlanta, this happened:

The boy's mother, Jessica Bennett, 33, of Minnesota told the FBI that she and her son were seated in row 28, seat B, on February 8 on Delta Flight 721 that originated in Minneapolis, according to an FBI agent's affidavit filed in U.S. District Court in Atlanta this week.

The boy began crying because of the altitude change, and his mother tried to soothe him, court papers said.
Then Hundley, who was seated next to the mother and son, allegedly told her to "shut that ('N word') baby up," according to court documents.

Hundley then turned around and slapped the 2-year-old in the face with an open hand, which caused the child to scream even louder, the affidavit said.

Ya think? That sort of seems to go without saying, right? Hundley's the one crying now, since he faces an assault charge that carries a one-year prison term. Slapping other people's children is bad enough. Doing it while assuming the role of slave owner is far, far worse.

Don't let the black nurse care for the white baby

This one comes from a Flint, Michigan hospital. Again via CNN:

The lawsuit accuses managers at Hurley Medical Center in Flint of reassigning Tonya Battle, who has worked at the facility for 25 years, based on the color of her skin.

The man approached Battle, while she was caring for his child in the hospital's neonatal intensive care unit, asking to speak to her supervisor, according to the complaint filed in January by Battle's attorney.

She pointed the charge nurse in his direction.

The man, who is not named in the filing, allegedly showed her a tattoo that may have been "a swastika of some kind" and told her that he didn't want African-Americans involved in his baby's care.

The request, according to the lawsuit, made its way through management ranks, and was granted. Battle's manager called her at home to tell her she would be reassigned -- and why, the suit says.

[...]

The hospital's lawyer then objected to the decision, and the note was removed. The staff then told the father that they could no long honor his request, according to the complaint.

Even so, the lawsuits alleges, for more than a month no African American nurses were assigned to care of the child.

Emory University President defends 3/5ths person compromise

When one is arguing for the value of compromise, it might be a bad idea to cite the 3/5ths of a person provision in the constitution as a fine example of how compromise can work.

One instance of constitutional compromise was the agreement to count three-fifths of the slave population for purposes of state representation in Congress. Southern delegates wanted to count the whole slave population, which would have given the South greater influence over national policy. Northern delegates argued that slaves should not be counted at all, because they had no vote. As the price for achieving the ultimate aim of the Constitution—“to form a more perfect union”—the two sides compromised on this immediate issue of how to count slaves in the new nation. Pragmatic half-victories kept in view the higher aspiration of drawing the country more closely together.

Some might suggest that the constitutional compromise reached for the lowest common denominator—for the barest minimum value on which both sides could agree. I rather think something different happened. Both sides found a way to temper ideology and continue working toward the highest aspiration they both shared—the aspiration to form a more perfect union. They set their sights higher, not lower, in order to identify their common goal and keep moving toward it.

Far be it from me to argue with a university president, but the Federalist Papers have a completely different version of how that compromise came to be, and who argued for full personhood for slaves and who did not. Let's just say it went in the reverse direction. And, as Digby points out, there were some serious consequences, which we seem to still see today:

That "pragmatic compromise" was in service of a system that led to a bloody civil war and centuries of suffering for millions of African Americans. The "higher aspiration" wasn't met in that "compromise" it was forged in blood on battlefields filled with hundreds of thousands of casualties (and nearly two centuries later in the streets of Southern cities.) To use that as an example of how pragmatic compromise leads to the greater good over time is shockingly perverse.

Even more perverse, given the first two stories. Yes, the American Civil War never ended. It just shifted to new theatres.

Killing the Buddha: Outside a tea party.

David E's Fablog: Tony Heyward goes boating.

The Inverse Square: Carly Fiorina reveals the source of her failure at HP.

Tapped: Greenspan is back, baby.

Connecting the Dots: McChrystal's MacArthur Act.

Brad Blog: John Kyl just makes stuff up.

Guest post by Batocchio. Temporarily e-mail tips to batocchio9 AT yahoo DOT com.

Above the Law: Elena Kagen and Me: One semester of Civil Procedure with the new SCOTUS nominee

Grist: Political fallout from the Gulf oil spill: Hill hearings, climate-bill questions, MMS reorganizing

Miller-McCune Online: Unconscious bias amplifies anti-Obama rhetoric

A Tiny Revolution: Seymour Hersh describes "battlefield executions" by U.S. in Afghanistan

Legal Schnauzer: Insider on Siegelman prosecution fears for his life

Apoliticus: Top 10 Craziest Election Results

Jon Stewart shows no fear when he exposes FOX News for their bias against health care reform, but the rest of the media just excuses their GOP propaganda behavior.

Well, Howell Raines called out the media for turning a blind eye to the TV cable channel known as FOX News.

One question has tugged at my professional conscience throughout the year-long congressional debate over health-care reform, and it has nothing to do with the public option, portability or medical malpractice. It is this: Why haven't America's old-school news organizations blown the whistle on Roger Ailes, chief of Fox News, for using the network to conduct a propaganda campaign against the Obama administration -- a campaign without precedent in our modern political history?

Through clever use of the Fox News Channel and its cadre of raucous commentators, Ailes has overturned standards of fairness and objectivity that have guided American print and broadcast journalists since World War II. Yet, many members of my profession seem to stand by in silence as Ailes tears up the rulebook that served this country well as we covered the major stories of the past three generations, from the civil rights revolution to Watergate to the Wall Street scandals. This is not a liberal-versus-conservative issue. It is a matter of Fox turning reality on its head with, among other tactics, its endless repetition of its uber-lie: "The American people do not want health-care reform."

--

For the first time since the yellow journalism of a century ago, the United States has a major news organization devoted to the promotion of one political party. And let no one be misled by occasional spurts of criticism of the GOP on Fox. In a bygone era of fact-based commentary typified, left to right, by my late colleagues Scotty Reston and Bill Safire, these deceptions would have been given their proper label: disinformation.

I try not to believe that this kid-gloves handling amounts to self-censorship, but it's hard to ignore the evidence...read on

I think for a long time the MSM was worried about being labeled as having a "liberal bias' and got so used to the criticism that they internalized it. But when the liberal blogosphere came onto the picture and was horrified at what we were witinessing they weren't used to handling criticism from the left and instead of looking at their own behavior, they lashed out at us like they never would to the right.

Now I believe they are just down right scared of the right. They are afraid to have their email boxes filled with psycho rants, they are afraid that the comment sections in their on-line articles will have to be shut down and they are afraid of the backlash AM talk radio will whip up against them individually. Fearmongering doesn't only work on our national security front.

Eric Boehlert writes:

Watching the elite Beltway press actually rally around Fox News last year after the White House called it out as an illegitimate outlet for real news was one of the saddest journalism spectacles in recent memory. Recall that during the Bush years, the GOP White House often cooked up allegations and lashed out at prominent (i.e. genuine) news organizations, such as NBC and the New York Times, and I don't recall anybody rallying around them.

But when a Democratic administration called out Fox News for what it really is, a GOP propaganda tool (i.e. the Opposition Party), the same D.C. press corps played defense for Murdoch's dishonest empire and actually demanded Dems back off.

Good grief.

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But I think the huge majority of it is explained quite simply: fear or the 'liberal media bias' charge. Conservatives have been pounding the press for more than four decades about their alleged bias and the Beltway press corps has developed rabbit ears when it comes to the allegation. And frankly, there's plenty of evidence that jouranlists are terrified of the charge and nervous about what can happen to their careers if that tag sticks.

So what's an easy way to prove you're not liberal? (Aside from becoming lapdogs during the Bush years.) You pretend Fox News is legit. You pretend that sure, Ailes has some opinion guys on at night, but there's a clear dividing line between the news and opinion. You pretend that Fox News is just the mirror opposite of MSNBC.

Basically, you sign off on a charade that, as Raines points out, any newsroom pro can see is a complete joke.

David and I have the goods and we'll be exposing more about FOX soon enough in our new book, but I think the journalism community should know that we'll have their backs if they do stand up and do the right thing. Howard Kurtz likes to argue that MSNBC does the same for the left because they have a three hour block of center left opinion shows, but FOX News promotes the GOP agenda throughout their entire 24 hour cycle. And did you see MSNBC actively support the left at the height of the anti-Iraq war protests and send their hosts down to flame the fires at those protests? Eric's points are well taken, but fear is now guiding them and I don't mean because they would be labeled liberals.

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Bill O'Reilly decided to bring in Fox's newest big-name hire, John Stossel, to help buck up his annual pledge drive in the War on Christmas.

And Stossel -- who is no innocent in the ways of ideological reporting himself -- actually seemed embarrassed by it all -- mainly because O'Reilly was stooping to the lowest reporting methods possible to make his point.

Namely, he was citing as somehow authoritative ("I trust the folks") an online poll from an outfit called "StandForChristmas.com". Stossel briefly mentions that it actually was run by another group, and O'Reilly talks over him and emphasizes that it's "StandForChristmas."

Of course, "StandForChristmas" is actually run by the religious-right cranks at James Dobson's Focus on the Family. So there's an obvious bias built into the poll and its potential viewers in the first place. And then to treat the results of any open online poll as meaningful in any real sense is just palpable nonsense.

Stossel obviously understands this, and mostly tries to work his way around O'Reilly's insistence that the poll means something by just repeating its results.

But the whole thing goes completely off the rails and into another universe when O'Reilly tries to claim that corporate chiefs telling their employees what to say is "just fascist":

O'Reilly: But my point is, that I thought it was fascist -- fascism, which offends a libertarian like you -- for a CEO or a store manager to tell their employees, 'You better not say Merry Christmas' -- even though the reason we're selling stuff is because of Christmas. Isn't that fascism?

Stossel: No, it's ownership. He built the business, if he says, 'Stand on your head and sing when people come in,' you don't have to work there, you can quit, it's his business.

You realize from exchanges like this just how long it's been since Bill O'Reilly has had anything even remotely like a real job. Because in most people's real jobs -- especially in the retail biz -- employees are instructed all the time in exactly the kinds of things they're supposed to say. That's not fascist, it's just business.

Indeed, Bill O'Reilly has himself on numerous occasions demanded that people in various positions be fired for saying things he believes reflect badly on their employers -- remember his attacks on Rosie O'Donnell? Guess that makes him a fascist, by his own definition.

What would Christmas be without a warm cup of Bill O'Reilly hypocrisy?

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Kenneth Gladney is doing his best to cash in on his 15 seconds of fame, following his fake "brutal assault" at the hands of SEIU supporters outside a St. Louis "town hall" on health care. Today he went on Fox and Friends with his attorney, Dave Brown, who announced that he wanted local prosecutors to pursue the case as a "hate crime."

Mr. Brown appears to be confused about just what constitutes a "hate crime". Namely, it take more than merely the matter of Gladney being a black man to qualify as such a crime; indeed, the main qualification has to be that a bias motivation has to be present. That is, prosecutors would have to establish that the people being charged were motivated by the victim's race.

Gladney claims that he was called the N-word -- but the man using that word was another black man. Proving a motivation of bias against blacks will be pretty difficult under those circumstances.

Moreover, if you go back and look at the tape, a couple of other things are worth noting:

-- It's the black man with whom Gladney apparently first had a verbal altercation who we see lying on his back on the street when the tape opens. If anyone can claim to be assaulted here, it's this man.

-- It's not clear that any actual assault occurred here at all. Gladney is pushed to the ground by someone trying to clear space for his friend. Certainly, given that Gladney appears to be just fine for most of the rest of the video, there's no evidence that he suffered any harm whatsoever in the incident.

And in order to file a hate-crime charge, any prosecutor will have to prove first that a crime was committed -- well before he can even look into the question of whether it was committed with a bias motivation. Considering that both appear extremely unlikely, Brown and Gladney are clearly both just grandstanding.

Besides ... aren't conservatives opposed to hate-crimes laws as a matter of principle?

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Sen. Jeff Sessions attacked People for the American Way on Face the Nation Sunday morning because they are exposing the right wing attacks on Judge Sonia Sotomayor by calling into question Frank Ricci's litigious nature.

SCHIEFFER: Let me just bring up something about the firefighters'case. This was the case where she ruled against the firefighters who claimed they were discriminated against because they didn't get a

promotion up here in Connecticut because minorities did not score high enough on the same test and the whole test was thrown out. Now the Supreme Court reversed her on that case. But People For The American Way, which is a liberal group that supports Sonia Sotomayor, is calling attention to what they call Frank Ricci. He's the central character in this, his litigious and background. And they say, they point out that that he has been fired from another fire department,that he claimed discrimination because he was dyslexic. Did they have a point here?

SESSIONS: No. That's just typical of the personal attacks of People For The American Way and the hard left that is supporting this nomination. These were 18 firefighters who filed this lawsuit, not just Frank Ricci, his name was the first one on the case but 18 of

them.

And when you show empathy for one party, Bob, you unnecessarily show a bias against another group. And this is the thing -- I just want to say I think Pat and I would agree on this. We need to think through how we handle these cases today. And do it in a way that is effective legally and her opinion was rejected by the Supreme Court. It was a very important opinion.

Exposing pertinent information about a man that is going in front of Congress to testify against Sonia is not a personal attack. It's called due diligence. Maybe he should read Dahlia Lithwick's piece on Mr. Ricci: The New Haven firefighter is no stranger to employment disputes.

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David Neiwert posted about David Zurawik's frothy appearance with Howard Kurtz last weekend as he bashed MSNBC. On 'Reliable Sources,' David Zurawik decries heated cable talk by shrieking about MSNBC's 'fascism'

Zurawik felt compelled to explain himself in a little more detail online.

As you can see from the video, I am harder on MSNBC than Fox, because this NBC sister channel has outrageously decided it doesn't have to cover news on weekends and holidays -- and yet, still calls itself a news channel.I have to admit, it is a great business moldel: Don't cover the news. let someone fulfill that expensive task. We'll just put on ideologues like Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow and let them mock our opponents as we opine about the news that others like CNN went to trouble and expense of gathering and verifying.

He's upset because they choose to run some of those Locked Up episodes during the weekend, really? Here's a little info for Z: MSNBC does cover the news on the weekends, they just don't do it 24/7. He should probably check their schedule sometime before making the claim that they don't cover the news on Saturday and Sunday. And WTF does that have to do with how they cover the news in general or if they are biased in their reporting? Which is worse, showing some non-news shows on the weekend, or pushing a political agenda 24 hours a day, seven days a week for as many years as they've been on the air?

Fox News tries to shrug off their right-wing bias by saying they have opinion talking heads, so they don't consider those shows to be news. But if anyone -- and that means you, David -- were to watch Fox News, starting with Fox and Friends right up through Neil Cavuto, you would see a right-wing bias that would make your head spin -- all dressed up as news reporting. Heavy anti-union messages, insane free-market Wall Streeters and anti-Obama segments dominate their coverage, but somehow Z isn't outraged by that behavior as much.

Sure, MSNBC's opinion lineup, from Hardball to Maddow is largely center-left commentators, but they start their mornings with three hours of Joe Scarborough before going into seven straight hours of news blocks that for the most part interview politicians from both parties along with the usual battle of the consultants. Andrea Mitchell has her own hour and you can't call her a lefty.

So while I agree with some of Z's complaints, please get some basic facts straight. And his criticism of MSNBC gives us a look into the window of the mind of a Villager critic.

And yes, these cable shows have hurt America, because they are always looking for a "conflict" which will increase ratings rather than examine the news and issues at hand with an emphasis to inform us rather than persuade of. This approach aided Bush and Cheney in their quest to go and invade Iraq, and look where that has taken us: Thousands dead, innocents lost, billions of dollars spent, torture, military commissions and wiretapping soon followed. Good job, cable news.

How dumb are the right wing bloggers and pundits? I don't have enough time to tell you, but this latest crazed outburst of supposed "media bias" over the treatment of George W. Bush is proof enough that they are suffering a deep and dark depression.

Patrick Gavin posts a very short video clip, all of twenty two seconds that's supposedly a complete media critique of the way the White House press reporters loathe George Bush and just fawn over Barack Obama. Hot Air's Allahpundit writes:

This one’s making the rounds but I’m not sure why. Isn’t this standard chivalrous behavior when you’re in love? If The One were forced to trod upon a muddy path, wouldn’t you expect Chuck Todd or Helen Thomas to lay their coats over it for him? Actually, there’s a more mundane explanation. Sort of.

--

Doesn’t that … basically prove the point of the video? Okay, fine, they’re not anti-Bush. They’re just really, really pro-Obama. Whew!

I know, I should have some pity on their poor souls, but how can I pity idiocy?

Not that I need to link to something that explains away this lunacy, but I will anyway.

John Dickerson:

A video, put together by Politico's Patrick Gavin, is making the rounds showing two presidential visits to the White House briefing room. In one, George Bush arrives for a press conference in February 2008, and the press remains seated. In the second, from last Friday, Barack Obama surprises the press by appearing in the midst of the daily briefing. They stand to greet him. (Given that the press is supposedly in the tank for Obama, shouldn't critics be happy they didn't kneel?)

This may seem silly, but it's symbolic: The discrepancy in treatment is all the proof a Republican needs to show that the press shows special deference to the new Democratic president. It's a distorted picture, though. We stood all the time for President Bush. Reporters customarily do so to show respect for the office of the presidency. In the East Room of the White House, we stood not only when the president came in but to ask questions. Some reporters said thank you to the president even before asking their questions. This practice continues under President Obama....read on

I would tell Allahpundit to just hold his breath until he turns blue whenever he sees media bias when there isn't any, but he might forget to breathe altogether.

Tbogg finds some more.

(photo via Reuters)

I was going to write that this didn't surprise me, but it actually does because it's not the FOX News channel.

The network is turning down the president's request to show his prime-time news conference on Wednesday. The news conference marks Obama's 100th day in office. Instead of the president, Fox viewers will see an episode of the Tim Roth drama "Lie to Me."

It's the first time a broadcast network has refused Obama's request. This will be the third prime-time news conference in Obama's presidency. ABC, CBS and NBC are airing it.

Fox Broadcasting Company issued a statement on their motives:

"The Fox Broadcasting Company will not air the Presidential News Conference," Fox said in a statement. "Fox's sister networks, Fox News Channel and the Fox Business Network, will air the press conference in its entirety. Fox will be alerting viewers with an onscreen graphic at the top of the 8:00 PM (ET) hour that the press conference is available on Fox News Channel and the Fox Business Network.

If John McCain or George Bush were giving a prime time news conference, FOX would be giving it wall to wall coverage. Being the only network not to broadcast it kind of hits home the right wing bias that Rupert Murdock has brought to television. If Bill O'Reilly or Chris Wallace start whining about President Obama not appearing on their network they can only look at their own behavior, but this is much bigger than that. This is the president giving a speech to the nation at a critical time in our history and FOX just passed.