The Fox News network takes a lot of unfair criticism because it’s opinion shows (Hannity and Colmes, The O’Reilly Factor etc) are predominantly of a conservative bent.  All opinion shows have a bias.

Their actual news is as close to being actually balanced as anyones is.  They tend to report more sides of an issue, whereas the other cable and network news shows tend to tailor their news to the left, in my opinion.  They do so by reporting for the worst and ignoring the positives or Iraq, and ignoring or down playing some stories that are unflattering to Liberals and their causes.

That said, I still tend to skip around on the news as much as I can, to get a generous blend.  Not even fox gets a free pass of presumption.

Hot Air posted this video today of Fox News Chairmen Roger Ailes spoke at the Radio-Television News Directors Association awards ceremony where he was one of the recipients for the First Amendment Award, and this is the speech he delivered.  It is a powerful reminder of the real nature of our First Amendment freedoms.

Ignore the typically lame speech jokes at the beginning, and really listen to the meat of it.

Only people who understand different points of view can exercise an informed decision in the voting booth. Freedom of the press did not invent democracy. Democracy invented freedom of the press. For saying that, I sometimes get accused of being too pro-American or too pro-Israeli. I just happen to like democracies. But it don’t mean we can’t cover the news fairly. Bias is not necessarily what you believe in, but it can be reporting a story and leaving out other people’s valid beliefs. The first amendment also guarantees freedom of speech, which is linked to another favorite word in today’s world, ‘diversity.’ But diversity is not just skin color, economic status, geography and religion. It is also diversity of thought.

First, if you think the movement to “draft” Al Gore is not building, look here:

http://www.cafepress.com/4gore2008

Cruising around the web tonight I ran across this interesting headline by Melinda Henneberger:

Clarence Thomas: Affirmative Action Not Needed… Even Though My Office Is “All White Males”

Notice the immediate implication.  Because Thomas has white clerks, then there is an immediate need for Affirmative action.  The relative merits and qualifications of the clerks is apparently not a factor.

That is a clear representation the liberal need for affirmative action:  Race is more important the ability, which last I looked is racism.  The story goes on.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas famously opposes affirmative action, and clearly feels slandered by the suggestion he ever benefited from such a thing.

So, if we no longer need such programs, how’s that working out in Thomas’s own office?

Not well, as it turns out: “Mine happen to be all white males,” Thomas said of his current crop of clerks. “I don’t have quotas.”

Again, the implication is that if they are all white it is a failure of affirmative action to balance the playing field not just for blacks, but for women as well.  So by their standard, Thomas is a racist.

When Rep. Jose Serrano, a Democrat from New York, asked about diversity today at a Congressional hearing on the Supreme Court’s budget, it was Justice Anthony Kennedy who answered first: “We’ve made strides,” he said, but there is just tremendous competition for qualified minority law students. “The profession as a whole is very conscious of it, very conscious.”

“Conscious,” Serrano persisted, “but, have we made progress?”

Of the most recent class of 57 clerks, Kennedy answered, only 7 were minority. And the number of women in the group has fallen dramatically, from more than a third to only 17 percent this year.

So, now the whole court is racist.

And not just that, she again touches the subject of Clarence’s actual abilities.

Heh!

From Right Wing News

When our troops were overseas in WW2, people like Tokyo Rose would do radio broadcasts that tried to encourage them to give up. Now, we have liberals back in the states doing exactly the same thing.

In the video you’re about to see, you have liberal protestors standing on the side of the road, as equipment is being delivered, encouraging the troops to desert. That’s certainly something no patriot would ever do.

Calling their Sgt a Douche Bag is very convincing and intellectually powerful.

“You don’t have to go!”

Yes they do:  So Douche Bags like you will have freedom of speech and can sing idiotic songs and get arrested at City Council meetings.