Editor & Publisher, the heretofore placid trade magazine that is getting an edge under editor Greg Mitchell, takes on Paul Wolfowitz this morning, as did the even more placid Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post. Wolfie dissed the press in testimony on the Hill. And now he’s already issued an apology.

Now if he’s just issue a resignation.

Still, I’m not happy with E&P and its decision to study whether the media is liberal. Following the Pew report that conservatives have hyped relentlessly as proof of the media’s bias, E&P said it will conduct a study.

The evidence is thin, though Robert Samuelson in yesterday’s Washington Post column says the proof is there.

Rush Limbaugh has 14.5 million weekly listeners. According to Pew, 77 percent are conservative, 16 percent moderate and 7 percent liberal. Or take Fox’s 1.3 million prime-time viewers: 52 percent are conservative, 30 percent are moderate and 13 percent liberal. By contrast, 36 percent of Americans are conservative, 38 percent moderate and 18 percent liberal. The liberals’ media favorites are slightly less lopsided. The audience for “The NewsHour” is 22 percent conservative, 44 percent moderate and 27 percent liberal. NPR’s audience is 31 percent conservative, 33 percent moderate and 30 percent liberal. Of course, many news outlets still have broad audiences. Daily newspapers are collectively close to national averages; so is CNN.

First of all, the definitions are murky. What is a liberal? And then, Samuelson says the balanced audience of The NewsHour of PBS and the almost 1/3 split of the audience for NPR proves they’re biased liberally. I’m not so sure that’s proof. Or even makes sense.

But there goes E&P, with its shorts in a knot, worrying that the media is biased in favor of liberals. I can name at least three conservatively biased news/talk show hosts for every liberal one. In fact, the latter are few and far between. But conservatives point to every journalist who isn’t some sort of O’Reilly nut case and claim that because they’re not like him, they must be liberal.

Jay Rosen at Press Think has more than you could ever want to read about this.

Jr., that is. Former President Ronald Reagan’s son Ron, in an interview with Larry King last night, made it clear today’s Republicans are a different brand from his father’s party.

CALLER: Do you think your father’s, this is for Ron, do you think your father’s Republican Party is the same Republican Party that exists today?

REAGAN: I’m probably not the best qualified to answer that, because I’m not a Republican and don’t hang out with Republicans all the time. But looking from the outside, I would say no. It’s a much meaner party today. It’s been largely coopted by the religious right. And the spirit of bipartisan cooperation and beat each other’s brains out during the day, but after 5:00 have a beer and you can be friends?

KING: Ronald Reagan was that way, Goldwater was that way too.

Reagan also said he’s in the “Anybody but Bush” camp.

KING: You said, dad was also a deeply unabashedly religious man, but he never made the mistake of wearing his faith on his sleeve to gain political advantage. Were you referring to the president?

REAGAN: You know, it’s interesting.

KING: Everyone thought that.

REAGAN: I know. I wasn’t watching TV much after I delivered the eulogy for a few days. But after a couple of days I started getting calls from people saying, boy you really stirred something up, didn’t you? I thought, well, what? Well, you know, the stuff you said about Bush. I said, I didn’t say anything about Bush, why would I mention George W. Bush in my father’s eulogy?

No, no, no, no, the stuff about the religion. I thought, ha, funny, you then everybody thought I was talking about George W. Bush. And then I heard — everybody thought I was talking about George — but people connected with George W. Bush thought I was talking about George W. Bush. And then I began to think, maybe I was, I just didn’t know it.

KING: Do you think he wears his religion on his sleeve? He certainly refers to it more than your father ever did.

REAGAN: Well, you know, there was that answer he gave to the question about, did you talk to your father about going into Iraq? No, I talked to a higher father, you know, the almighty. When you hear somebody justifying a war by citing the almighty, God, I get a little worried, frankly. The other guys do that a lot. Osama bin Laden’s always talking about Allah, what Allah wants, that he’s on his side. I think that’s uncomfortable.

KING: Do you have thoughts on the war?

REAGAN: Sure, I have thoughts on the war.

KING: And what do you think?

REAGAN: And I think we lied our way into the war.

KING: You think it’s a mistake?

REAGAN: Absolutely, a terrible mistake. Terrible foreign policy error. We didn’t have to do it. It was optional. And we were lied to. The American public was lied to about WMD, the connection between Osama bin Laden and Saddam, which is virtually nonexistent except for fleeting contacts. But they’re still trying to pull that one off now, Cheney and all are out there flogging that.

KING: Can I gather from that, that you will not support this president?

REAGAN: No, I won’t.

KING: Will you support his opponent?

REAGAN: I will vote for whoever the viable candidate is who can defeat George W. Bush, yes.

KING: So, you might vote for Ralph Nader?

REAGAN: If he were a viable candidate I might.

KING: So the obviously you’re going to vote — what did you think your father would say, if he were here and listening to this?

REAGAN: I don’t think he would have gone into Iraq. I think he would have been much more interested in going after Osama bin Laden, who after all planned the 9/11 transactions.

KING: Would he be mad at you for saying, I’m not going to vote for this Republican?

REAGAN: I can’t imagine he would be. So long as I was telling the truth he’d be okay with that. And I am. So — no, I don’t think he’d be upset. Again, these are just my personal feelings you’ve asked, so I’ll answer.

KING: You’ve answered.

REAGAN: I just think it’s a terrible mistake. Terrible mistake.

Gov. Mark Warner’s effort to raise taxes is being touted as a blueprint for John Kerry with this Associated Press article by one of its better known political writers and distributed through Yahoo News. The article also says that although he’s been touted as a VP candidate, Warner hasn’t talked to Kerry about it and his financial holdings haven’t been investigated at by the Kerry campaign.

A few weeks ago, John Kerry decided to spend some campaign funds in Virginia for advertising, a move thought by some to be futile, given the conventional wisdom that the Commonwealth is solidly in the Bush column. Now, we learn that our next door neighbor may not be as “red” as was once thought. Bush’s lead over Kerry in N.C. is only five points – and that’s without N.C. Sen. John Edwards on the ticket.

The new poll hints at some of the reasons why:
* On the economy, 56 percent of those polled do not think Bush has done enough to protect furniture, textile and other manufacturing industries from foreign trade.
* On the war in Iraq, 46 percent of those polled approve of Bush’s leadership there while 44 percent disapprove. This is a remarkably narrow divide given this state’s long-standing support for the military.

Bush beat Gore in ’00 by 13 points.

As predicted, new state money for education doesn’t always find its way into the schools.

A friend and I were to meet two weeks ago at Camden Yards to watch a Baltimore Orioles baseball game. An hour before game time, it was pouring with a forecast for steady showers until midnight. I was still driving back from Newport News, trying to make the game by at least the third inning. My friend left eastern Loudoun County at 4:00 for the 7:30 game. He just made it just in time to wait 30 minutes before the game was called – after the brave souls who showed up spent their dinner money at the park. I won’t miss rooting for Pete Angelos’s team.

Baseball will always be my favorite sport – at least to watch. If the Montreal Expos move to Northern Virginia, I’m sure I’ll slog out to watch a lot more than I do the O’s.

But slog out is what I’ll precisely do. I live just outside the Beltway in central Fairfax County. Yesterday, the Northern Virginia group trying to get the Expos to relocate here presented their vision of the stadium and surrounding development in Loudoun County. The spot is just inside the Loudoun/Fairfax border.

Loudoun officials were in attendance touting the benefits to the county. But as Washington Post’s columnist Marc Fisher noted this morning, “Not a soul from the Fairfax County government was at yesterday’s announcement, even though a good slugger could hit a baseball from the stadium site across the county line into Fairfax.”

Why not?

The potential impact on Northern Virginia’s clogged roads remained unclear. [Vice president of transportation consultant Transcore James E.] Curren’s analysis showed that a typical 40-minute commute at 5:30 p.m. from Tysons Corner to Ashburn along the Dulles Toll Road would increase by two to four minutes on a game night, he said. The key congestion challenge, he said, is having enough entrances to the stadium to keep fans’ cars from plugging roads outside the development.

Unclear impact? Fairfax County officials were clearly not there because Loudoun County will get all the financial benefits and Fairfax will get all the traffic headaches.

Project developers have pledged tens of millions in road improvements, including a new interchange with the Dulles Toll Road, an interchange at what is now Innovation Drive and Route 28, and a link between the stadium and the Dulles Greenway. A Smart Tag, an electronic card similar to the EZPass, could be used to pay parking fees to streamline entrance to the park, the developers said. A shuttle service from a Metro station could serve as a stopgap pending a planned Metro extension to Dulles, they said.

Metro to Dulles? Not in my lifetime the ways things are going. I love baseball, but I’m not sure if, having nothing but “pledges,” I’ll be attending too many games. Rt. 28, along which the stadium will be built, is already a parking lot heading south during rush hour. It will see more cars added in that direction and probably enough in the other direction to clog it, too.

Meanwhile, Virginia Gov. Mark Warner said he supports the Loudoun County effort. “My first choice would be a Virginia site, my second choice would be the district, but I do think the national capital area deserves a team,” Warner said.

As Norfolk also has a bid in and the Governor thinks the capital area should get a team, where does that leave Norfolk? Hmmmm.

Fairfax County, a Washington suburb, is one of the few in the area that hasn’t passed a resolution on the impact of the Patriot Act.

Alexandria, Arlington County, Takoma Park, Greenbelt, Montgomery and Prince George’s counties and the District have passed resolutions denouncing the Patriot Act and promising to uphold the civil liberties of residents, according to the Bill of Rights Defense Committee.

Passing the resolutions is a largely symbolic act, but 330 localities nationwide, including New York City, Baltimore and Philadelphia, have done so.

Most of the resolutions, including the one that was discussed by the Fairfax supervisors yesterday, urge congressional delegations to allow the Patriot Act to expire or to add congressional oversight to the act.

Fairfax, on which have been imposed security significant costs – with accompanying though perhaps insufficient funds, decided by a 5-3 vote to study the Patriot’s Act impact on the civil liberties of Fairfax residents. No time limit was proscribed by the resolution.

Del. Preston Bryant (R-Roanoke), one of the leaders of the revolt of 17 GOP moderates who voted for a tax increase, has a thoughtful column that should be read by Democrats as a challenge.

He provides some insider information about what went on at the recent private “Ideas and Issues Retreat” among Republican Assembly members. He rightly dismisses as naïve any suggestion that policy can be divorced from politics. But he also writes,

It’s predicted that the House GOP in 2005 will lay out specific government reform initiatives. You’ll likely see legislation pushed that’ll make collaborations with the private sector more easily formed, all in hopes of capitalizing on innovations, technologies, and efficiencies honed by competitive market forces that don’t exist in the government world.

If only the GOP offers reform initiatives designed to better spend taxpayer money, the Democrats will lose whatever advantage they may have gained from the fractious battle among the GOP this past session.

Most Virginians apparently believed it was time to raise and reform some taxes. But that doesn’t mean they’ve completely endorsed how the state spends money. There are plenty of ways of streamlining government, including, as was apparently discussed at the GOP retreat, public-private partnerships. If Democrats sit back and let the GOP grab all the headlines regarding government reform, they’ll no doubt be painted, and perhaps rightly so, as simply “tax and spenders.”

Wonder what Democrats are saying at – or even if they are holding – an “ideas and issues” retreat?

Now that the Democratic primary for the congressional seat in the 8th district of Virginia is history, and after The Washington Post ombudsman agreed with us that the paper’s coverage was unfair in publishing unsubstantiated accusations that Moran uttered an unknown anti-Semitic remark, The Post continues today its coverage with an article in the weekly Fairfax Extra of the paper.

The chance to regurgitate the accusations is enabled by a story headlined “Moran’s Use of Editorial Stokes Ire of Jewish Leaders.”

Bending over backwards to cut The Post some slack, I can argue that the paper not only is covering a legitimate story but that in doing so it substantiates an argument I made last week about self-censorship.

The story is that “some Jewish leaders” were upset that in the final hours of the campaign Moran circulated a local newspaper’s editorial endorsing him. The editorial read, in part,

This election is not about Moran’s ability to lead, or about news headlines accusing him of questionable public statements or personal finances. It’s about a cabal of powerful Washington, D.C., based interests backing the Bush administration’s support for rightwing Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon’s handling of the Middle East conflict trying to upend an outspoken and powerful Democratic opponent.

It’s been no offhand comments of Moran, unscrupulously taken out of context and touted in front page headlines by the Washington Post more than once in the recent period. It’s been Moran’s ability to weigh in with his considerable seniority and powers of persuasion on behalf of a more balanced approach to the Middle East crisis that has made him a target of reprehensible smears and innuendos by a combination of pro-Republican and pro-Sharon interests, including The Post.

The same sordid mentality that is behind the Bush re-election campaign’s current effort to win by focusing on out-of-context sound-bite attacks against his opponent, to the point that no less than 80% of Bush’s TV ads are negative attacks, is driving the effort against Moran.

Maybe this is more about a mud fight between The Post and the weekly Falls Church News-Press. The Post’s Lisa Rein writes,

While not mentioning Jews, the editorial pushed an uncomfortable edge with what some Jewish leaders considered to be coded language that blamed Jews for steering U.S. foreign policy.
“It smacks of anti-Semitism,” said David Bernstein, Washington director of the American Jewish Committee. “It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that when you speak of a pro-Sharon cabal, that means Jews.”

Again, we’re seeing support for a more even-handed policy in the Middle East cast as anti-Semitism. And with Moran’s use of the editorial, he is somehow also guilty of anti-Semitism.

Jerome Chapman, a Jewish activist from Alexandria, said the editorial “demonizes and scapegoats supporters of Israel for Moran’s problems. An editorialist can, of course, express his opinion, but when the campaign reprints it and passes it out . . . it’s outrageous.”

Why can’t we say that Sharon’s policies are not only vicious and a form of terror in their own ways, but that they are counter-productive in establishing a secure, peaceful Israel? If The Post would have its way, we can’t. And that is self-censorship. Rein concludes,

The Israel-Palestinian conflict was in many ways an unspoken subtext in the primary contest. Moran has criticized Sharon’s declaration that Israel would continue “targeted killings” of Palestinian militants and strengthen West Bank settlements and called his a more “balanced” approach to the conflict, while [his opponent Andy] Rosenberg said he supported Sharon’s policy “when justified.” Rosenberg cultivated financial and political support from many Jewish voters.

Benton, whose newspaper weighs issues from downtown redevelopment in Falls Church to the war in Iraq, said he is frustrated that “you can’t oppose Sharon’s policies in the Middle East without being accused of anti-Semitism.”

“To me, there’s nothing anti-Semitic about my editorial,” he said. “I take umbrage at the idea that ‘cabal’ is a loaded word. . . . It doesn’t have prejudicial connotations.”

Amen.

The Washington Post today editorializes on Katie Webb, the lobbyist for the Virginia Hospital and Healthcare Association, and her decision to write what The Post calls a “refreshingly straightforward” letter to six Republicans who asked for money for their campaigns’ treasuries. In her letter, she said no and why.

So in a retaliatory move (much like the GOP’s attempt to remove sales tax exemptions for businesses because the business community supported higher taxes), the GOP called her letter bribery.

In a letter to Attorney General Jerry W. Kilgore (R), Republican Caucus Chairman R. Steven Landes (Augusta) said he believes the lobbyist’s statement violates laws that cover bribery.
“Ms. Webb’s suggestion that . . . financial support is contingent upon how we vote creates the impression that this lobbyist is engaged in a systematic effort to trade votes on specific legislation for financial support,” Landes wrote.

Remember: Steve Landes is also the guy who said during the budget debate that Virginia should stand by its long-standing tradition of considering expenditures and income separately — as if they don’t impact each other.

Of course, groups give to candidates because they support their issues. But leave it to Sen. Dick Saslaw (D-Fairfax) to be, as The Post’s editorial says of Webb’s letter, “[r]ight on the money.”

Senate Minority Leader Richard L. Saslaw (D-Fairfax) defended Webb and said her organization’s actions were no different from those of the National Rifle Association, which rarely gives money to lawmakers who support gun control.

“This is just the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard. Why would [the hospital association] want to contribute to the campaigns of someone who never supports their issues?” he said, adding that the Republicans’ effort is “tantamount to extortion. They are saying, give to my campaign or I’ll report you to the attorney general. The voters ought to show them the door.”