The Associated Press “reports”:

Last year, after the Supreme Court upheld a federal ban on late-term abortions, Obama said he “strongly disagreed” with the ruling because it “dramatically departs form [sic] previous precedents safeguarding the health of pregnant women.”

Could somebody remind me when the Supreme Court upheld “a federal ban on late-term abortions”? I must have missed that one.

These reporters are so damn politically correct that they would rather say something factually false, rather than repeat a phrase they have been told is ideologically loaded.

I’ll tell you what the AP won’t: the Supreme Court did not uphold “a federal ban on late-term abortions” last year. It upheld a federal ban on partial-birth abortions.

Of course, the AP doesn’t want to use the term “partial-birth abortion” because it is a misleading, contentious, and highly charged phrase that doesn’t accurately reflect what happens, which is an abortion after a partial birth.

So they’ll just tell you that there was a federal ban on late-term abortions — making it sound as though there is no longer any such thing as a late-term abortion, because, you know, there is a federal ban on them.

So Obama wasn’t against a ban on all late-term abortions. He was against a ban on partial-birth abortion, in which a doctor delivers a part of the baby, sticks a pair of scissors in the back of the baby’s head, and sucks out the baby’s brain matter using a suction catheter.

That would be the procedure that Obama wants to remain available.

Just so we’re clear.

UPDATE: More on Obama’s incredible hypocrisy on this issue here.

Posted by WLS:

This has probably been read by most here already.  But it pretty much lays on the table what critics of Obama’s politics of fakery have been saying about him for a while now.  Most of this was obvious to those who cared to look a year ago.  

The only thing new the campaign has revealed thus far in my view is that Obama is not nearly as smart as was thought to be the case, and his world view has been stunted by his failure to look far beyond the borders of South Side Chicago politics for the last 15 years. 

Harvard Law Review Editor??  Big deal — he never published an article. 

Constitutional Law Professor?? False — adjunct faculty lecturer who never published a single piece of scholarship on the subject and whose public pronouncements on the topic are laughable to those of us who have spent time studying the issues. 

The closing sentences are the best: 

He’s the most effectively political creature we’ve seen in decades. Even Bill Clinton wasn’t smart enough to succeed in politics by pretending to renounce politics.

There you have it.  The Dems have settled on a nominee with less character and dedication to principle than the King of Triangulation Bill Clinton. 

What a party.   

Jeff Jarvis:

What the AP and The New York Times’ Hansell don’t seem to realize is how hostile an act it is to send lawyer letters to individuals. They have armies of attorneys. We bloggers don’t. The mere act of sending us a letter can cost us money out of our own pockets. Sending a lawyer letter is an assault.

Armies of attorneys committing an assault. I like it. I think that captures it nicely.

I’m guessing Orin Kerr disagrees. When I similarly observed that the AP has an “army” of lawyers terrorizing bloggers, Kerr took me to task:

Patterico, I realize that you can get very excited in your blogging and can be a bit over-the-top (such as describing the sending of a notice and takedown letter as using an “army” to “terrorize” people — kind of waters down the terms, I would think).

Well, at least Jeff Jarvis gets it.

More Jarvis:

[I]t’s not up to the AP to set the definition of fair use. They can’t rewrite the law. You may say that they are trying to create safe harbor by setting their own rules. From our view, they are trying to put up a fence where it cannot legally exist.

Bingo.

Meanwhile, Robert Cox defends the Media Bloggers Association’s representation of Rogers Cadenhead.

Me, I’m tempted to start fisking AP articles that merit it. Fisking, of course, requires one to quote large passages from an article, so that one can level criticism. Done properly, it should be fair use — even, conceivably, if the entire article is reproduced.

Yeah, it might be a fun time to fisk some AP articles. Because you young punks aren’t putting up a fence in my yard!

So: anyone know any AP articles that need a good fisking?

Zachary Roth at the Columbia Journalism Review has this odd and quite untrue passage:

In recent presidential elections, anyone paying a basic amount of attention to the race has gone to the polls understanding one clear and compelling difference between the candidates: that the Democrat would pick judges who would vote to uphold Roe v. Wade, ensuring that abortion remains legal, and that the Republican would, in all likelihood, pick judges who would vote to overturn it, opening the door to state-level abortion bans. As a result, we’ve all been admirably well informed about the impact of our vote on this key issue.

This must be some new meaning of the phrase “in all likelihood” that I am unfamiliar with.

Let’s look at the judicial appointments since Nixon, and how they have voted or opined on Roe and/or Casey (which affirmed the central holding of Roe):

NIXON
Burger: Joined Roe majority
Blackmun: Wrote Roe
Powell: Joined Roe majority
Rehnquist: Dissented in Roe

FORD
Stevens: Joined Casey majority

REAGAN
O’Connor: Joined Casey majority
Scalia: Dissented in Casey
Kennedy: Joined Casey majority

BUSH I
Souter: Joined Casey majority
Thomas: Dissented in Casey

BUSH II
Roberts: Refused to join Thomas opinion saying Roe is bad law
Alito: Refused to join Thomas opinion saying Roe is bad law

That’s 12 justices. Fully seven voted in the majority in Roe or Casey. That’s a majority.

Only three voted against Roe or Casey.

The views of two are unknown, but they pointedly refused to join an opinion saying Roe is bad law.

Since when does 3 out of 12 constitute a great success rate?

So: what’s this “in all likelihood” nonsense?

If Roth had said that Republicans “try” to appoint Justices who would overturn Roe, that would be fine. But let’s be clear: “in all likelihood,” they are going to try . . . and fail.

Posted by WLS:

I’ve watched with dismay as Dan Abrams has lowered himself into the sewer over at MSNBC by going completely in the tank for Obama, and turning the network into a full-time operative of the DNC.  But Abrams is clearly one of the principal players behind that move, as it began after he gave up his prior show a couple years ago to be program director for the network.  I never imagined he was anything but a New York liberal, but in his prior incarnation when his show focused mainly on legal affairs, I found him to be a fair and insightful inquisitor of his guests and their viewpoints.

Abrams new show is only marginally less partisan than Dolpermann’s, but last night he reached a new low for himself.

At about the halfway mark the show he did a segment on the new video that emerged yesterday of the South Side Catholic Priest Michael Pfleger and his ridiculous “sermon” last Sunday at Obama’s church in Chicago.  Pfleger is a long-time ally retired Rev. Wright, and has appeared with and spoken glowingly of Louis Farrakhan.

(more…)

[Guest post by DRJ]

According to Breitbart, the AP has released the following headline without any accompanying story on the West Virginia election:

“Clinton wins large but symbolic victory in W.Va.”

I guess this is the media’s way to get those talking points out early.

UPDATE: Here’s the complete AP headline and story released May 13 @ 7:41 PM EST. The headline alone was released at 7:32 PM EST according to Breitbart.

– DRJ

[Guest post by DRJ]

Newsbusters’ Noel Sheppard was impressed with Salon Editor-in-chief Joan Walsh’s candor and impartiality in today’s CNN interview:

“I was struck when I got to Iowa and New Hampshire in January by how our media colleagues were just swooning over Barack Obama. That is not too strong a word. They were swooning. I was at a speech, I remember it, I will write about it some day, in Manchester, and every, the biggest names in our business were there, and they were, they could repeat some of his speech lines to one another. It was like a Bruce Springsteen concert where the fans sing along. And, you know, I respected it to some extent. He’s a towering political figure. Of our generation, he’s probably the best politician, he’s inspiring. And, reporters, white reporters, black reporters, reporters of every race, we want to get beyond racism in America. So, he was, he was inspiring, I understood it, they’re humans, they responded. The downside though is that they hate, hate Hillary Clinton, most of them. Hate is not too strong a word.”

Walsh also criticized McCain for accepting Hagee’s endorsement but said that since Hagee wasn’t McCain’s pastor, it wasn’t the same as the Obama-Wright relationship.

It’s refreshing to hear a liberal say these things. It will be more refreshing if she’s still saying them in October.

– DRJ

[Guest post by DRJ]

CNN announced that Tony Snow will join the network Monday as a conservative commentator:

“Former White House press secretary Tony Snow will join CNN as a conservative commentator beginning Monday.

CNN president Jon Klein announced that Snow, a long-time political observer with a longstanding news background, will contribute to CNN as the network continues to broadcast winning political coverage.”

The first comment for this story at CNN’s website was from someone named Bill:

“Oh my God! This explains why CNN has become so conservative and pro-Hillary lately.”

– DRJ

Not that long ago, the Los Angeles assistant bureau chief for the Associated Press told his troops: “Now and for the foreseeable future, virtually everything involving Britney is a big deal.”

He wasn’t kidding. From the AP today: Spears in minor accident on Ventura Freeway.

Britney Spears’ motoring misfortunes continue.

The pop star was involved in a minor traffic accident late Saturday, but no one was injured and no vehicles were damaged, authorities said.

Stop the presses, baby!

The L.A. Times is not immune to this silliness. In fact, I found the bombshell story about the Britney accident on the main page for the Los Angeles Times web site today. I wonder how many stories about murders of Compton teenagers will have to be squeezed out of the print edition to make the necessary room for the Britney fender-bender story. [UPDATE: Or, as commenter Sam points out, “non fender-bender story” — since no fender was bent.]

[Guest post by DRJ]

The New York Times reports more bad news for the Clinton campaign:

“Over the last five weeks, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York has featured in her campaign stump speeches the story of a health care horror: an uninsured pregnant woman who lost her baby and died herself after being denied care by an Ohio hospital because she could not come up with a $100 fee.

The woman, Trina Bachtel, did die last August, two weeks after her baby boy was stillborn at O’Bleness Memorial Hospital in Athens, Ohio. But hospital administrators said Friday that Ms. Bachtel was under the care of an obstetrics practice affiliated with the hospital, that she was never refused treatment and that she was, in fact, insured.

“We implore the Clinton campaign to immediately desist from repeating this story,” said Rick Castrop, chief executive officer of the O’Bleness Health System.”

I don’t think reporters would have waited 5 weeks to track down and report this story if it had been McCain. In any event, the New York Times puts another nail in Hillary’s *Presidential hopes* coffin.

– DRJ

[Guest post by DRJ]

The problem is, it’s not a real recession. Beldar thinks it’s a lie.

Note to Beldar: Right on cue, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton announces that much of the country is already in a recession.

– DRJ

[posted by Justin Levine]

Some important questions for Disney shareholders concerning one of the best television mini-series ever made. [Youtube link]