I know we've all grown weary of the omissions and errors the MSM are guilty of, but this morning when I opened the LA Times and read their latest article on the fight over the filibuster:
Frist Pushes Toward Showdown on Judges , I felt like Peter Finch in "Network". I wanted to yell out my front door:
I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more. Here's the part that made me want to spit bullets:
Republicans accuse Democrats of breaking Senate tradition by resorting to the filibuster to block judges. Democrats accuse Bush and his Republican allies of breaking tradition by continuing to push for controversial choices.
No mention of the fact that the Republicans' accusation is patently false.
No mention that if any precedent was set, it was set by the Republicans fillibustering Abe Fortas to block a Democratic president's Supreme Court nominee. No mention of the fact that this is just another attempt by the Republicans to rewrite history so it is more convenient for them. More on the flip.
What is even more galling about this omission by correspondent Maura Reynolds is that later in the same article, she has an obvious opening again to set the record straight. If she didn't want to mess with her wonderful rhetorical parallelism in the earlier passage, she could have easily inserted the historical facts about Abe Fortas here:
Conservatives in and out of the Senate have been urging Frist to move quickly, in part to ensure that Democrats are disarmed of the filibuster before a Supreme Court vacancy. "I've been advocating for months that we should move on this," said Sen. George Allen (R-Va.), who called Democratic filibusters of judicial nominations an important political issue. Leaders on both sides said they saw little room for a deal to avert the confrontation.
But no. She can't be bothered to actually inform her readers of the true historical context. She also can't be bothered to mention that the Republicans will have to break Senate rules to change the Senate rules. Apparently Ms. Reynolds can't be bothered to report that a much more stunning precedent than filibustering judges is about to be set if the Vice-President, in his role as President of the Senate, can just set aside Senate rules he doesn't like by declaring them unconstitutional. Instead, she merely says:
Democrats are threatening to filibuster three of the four judicial nominees awaiting confirmation by the Senate. If Democrats call a filibuster on one of them, Frist has said he will move to change Senate rules to prohibit use of the tactic to block the confirmation votes on judges....If the rule change on the filibuster passes, it would clear the way for all of Bush's judicial nominees to have up-or-down votes. To win confirmation, they would need 51 votes in the 100-seat Senate. The GOP holds 55 seats.
I am tired of news coverage that allows big lies to go unchallenged and unprecedented abuses of power to go unreported. If you are, too, please read the Times article and then write a letter to the editor to protest this kind of journalism.
Also, if you wish to contact the journalist who wrote this article, her name is Maura Reynolds. She is based in the Times Washington, D.C. bureau, and she covers Congress and falls under the National desk. Her boss should be Don Frederick, Editor of the Congress/Politics department. Bureau Chief for D.C. is Doyle McManus. Linda Finestone is Assistant National Editors for the Washington Bureau. National Editor is Scott Kraft. Guidelines for contacting them are as follows:
To contact a staff member by e-mail, please compose an e-mail to them using this address format: Firstname.Lastname@latimes.com.
Let's be like water on stone. Enough is enough.