On Friday's Inside Washington on PBS, as the panel discussed the new Obama administration rule that requires Catholic employers to provide health insurance coverage for contraception to their employees, both liberal columnist Mark Shields and conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer hit Obama for the decision, while NPR's Nina Totenberg claimed that there were valid arguments in both directions as she made a flawed analogy between contraception and immunization as a defense of the Obama position.

But the blunt criticism directed at Obama by the liberal Shields, who is also a longtime regular on the PBS NewsHour, was the most surprising part of the show. After host Gordon Peterson noted that some Catholic leaders had supported Obamacare, and asked if they are "being hung out to dry," Shields responded:

They've been hung out to dry. I mean, this is a dissing, in common parlance, of Catholics. I haven't noticed thousands of people in groups lined up to provide services to the poor and the hungry and the left out and the left behind, and that's what Catholic Charities has done, that's what Catholic schools do in big cities.

And the idea that somehow that they're not doing societies – they aren't in it for the bucks. They're in it because they provide these services, and it's their mandate by their religion. I just, I don't understand Barack Obama on this, and I think that politically Catholics have voted on the winning side in every presidential election (INAUDIBLE).

Totenberg soon jumped in:

There's a very good argument that is being made by the Catholic Church, but if you take it out of the area of contraceptives and you said supposing you had a preschool that wouldn't do immunizations because its religion didn't allow immunizations, or wouldn't  insure for immunizations. We're not talking about paying here, we're talking about insurance and insurance that people can avail themselves of. The board of health would be in there. It's a very tricky question. There are very good arguments to be made on both sides.

Krauthammer ended up knocking down Totenberg's argument and attacked "liberal secular arrogance." Krauthammer:

Look, immunization is a matter of public safety; birth control is not. It's a huge difference, and what this is doing is saying, as Mark indicated, the Catholic Church isn't only a church. It's an institution that actually has outreach and social serviesa dn does good works. Liberals say, okay, "In the church, you can appoint anybody you want and we'll leave you alone, but once you step out into society, you have to be under our heel and you have to provide a morning after pill, which for Catholic, a believing Catholic in the hierarchy of the church, is an abomination. Otherwise, you're cut off, and that is liberal secular arrogance and has no place in this society.

Below is a transcript of the relevant portion of the the Friday, February 3, Inside Washington on PBS:

GORDON PETERSON: New Obama administration policy requires all employers, including Catholic employers, to pay for FDA-approved contraceptives regardless of the Catholic Church teaching on this issue. Now, during the debate over the health care law, the president of the Catholic Health Association supported the President. Now, the President's critics say – Sister Carole Keehan and others who supported this bill – are being hung out to dry. Your take, Mark?

MARK SHIELDS: They've been hung out to dry. I mean, this is a dissing, in common parlance, of Catholics. I haven't noticed thousands of people in groups lined up to provide services to the poor and the hungry and the left out and the left behind, and that's what Catholic Charities has done, that's what Catholic schools do in big cities.

And the idea that somehow that they're not doing societies – they aren't in it for the bucks. They're in it because they provide these services, and it's their mandate by their religion. I just, I don't understand Barack Obama on this, and I think that politically Catholics have voted on the winning side in every presidential election (INAUDIBLE).

PETERSON: Is it relevant or irrelevant that the vast majority of Catholics practice contraception in violation of this teaching?

SHIELDS: It is irrelevant because what you're doing is you're closing down Catholic institutions. That's what you're basically (INAUDIBLE).

NINA TOTENBERG, NPR: Can I just say something here? This has been the law actually  since 2000. There's an EEOC ruling; 28 states have laws like this. There's a very good argument that is being made by the Catholic Church, but if you take it out of the area of contraceptives and you said supposing you had a preschool that wouldn't do immunizations because its religion didn't allow immunizations, or wouldn't  insure for immunizations. We're not talking about paying here, we're talking about insurance and insurance that people can avail themselves of. The board of health would be in there. It's a very tricky question. There are very good arguments to be made on both sides.

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: Look, immunization is a matter of public safety; birth control is not. It's a huge difference, and what this is doing is saying, as Mark indicated, the Catholic Church isn't only a church. It's an institution that actually has outreach and social serviesa dn does good works. Liberals say, okay, "In the church, you can appoint anybody you want and we'll leave you alone, but once you step out into society, you have to be under our heel and you have to provide a morning after pill, which for Catholic, a believing Catholic in the hierarchy of the church, is an abomination. Otherwise, you're cut off, and that is liberal secular arrogance and has no place in this society.

Not surprisingly, the Obama-loving media are having a field day with Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's comment to CNN's Soledad O'Brien regarding not being "concerned about the very poor."

MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell Wednesday decided to make an even bigger deal out of this issue by cherry-picking Rush Limbaugh to make it appear the conservative radio host shared the press's view (video follows with transcript and commentary):

LAWRENCE O’DONNELL: If there was anyone in America who you might expect to cheer you on for saying “I'm not concerned about the very poor,” it would be Rush Limbaugh. But even rush, as much as he might share that feeling with Romney, knew it was a very, very stupid thing to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RUSH LIMBAUGH: "I'm not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there." The safety net is one of the biggest cultural problems we've got!

Everybody knows what he's trying to say but he didn't say it and he makes himself a target with this stuff. He comes across as the prototypical rich Republican. And it's gonna make it harder and harder and harder and harder to go after Obama because this turns around on him. You know, all these Wizards of Smart in the Republican establishment say, "We can't have Newt out there! Why, Newt's gonna be the topic. We need Obama to be the topic. We need Obama to be the guy campaign's about. If Newt's out there, it's only gonna be about Newt." Well, what evidence is there that it's not gonna be about Romney with these kinds of statements?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O’DONNELL: Rush Limbaugh worried about the prototypical Republican? Rush who makes at least $50 million a year and flies in his own Gulfstream everywhere he goes worried about the prototypical rich Republican?

Actually, that's not what Limbaugh was worried about at all. Here's a transcript of Rush's full comments regarding this matter with the edited out sentences in bold:

LIMBAUGH: "I like firing people." "I'm not concerned about the very poor."

Both of them, if they're stand-alones and taken out of context, are big problems — and they indicate a problem. Taken in context — which isn't going to happen with the Drive-By Media. Taken in context, it's understandable. But I even have a problem with this in context.

"I'm not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there." The safety net is one of the biggest cultural problems we've got!

We had better be worried about it just like we had better get angry over Obamacare. Obamacare is worth getting mad about. Mitt said that it wasn't. This biz, "I'm not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there"? Right, the safety net is contributing to the destruction of their humanity and their futures!

Everybody knows what he's trying to say but he didn't say it and he makes himself a target with this stuff. He comes across as the prototypical rich Republican. And it's gonna make it harder and harder and harder and harder to go after Obama because this turns around on him. You know, all these Wizards of Smart in the Republican establishment say, "We can't have Newt out there! Why, Newt's gonna be the topic. We need Obama to be the topic. We need Obama to be the guy campaign's about. If Newt's out there, it's only gonna be about Newt." Well, what evidence is there that it's not gonna be about Romney with these kinds of statements?

Notice that O'Donnell skipped the introduction and a very large chunk in the middle that particularly included, "The safety net is contributing to the destruction of their humanity and their futures!"

This was Limbaugh's point: the safety net is a terrible thing and Romney – a Republican presidential candidate – was praising it.

Limbaugh continued with this theme later in the show:

LIMBAUGH: Everybody knows what he's trying to say here, but you give them "I'm not concerned about the very poor," you chop it off there and it could be about anything. I'm not concerned about the poor in the way they're eating. I'm not concerned about the poor and the car they have. I'm not concerned about the poor and where they live. You can do all kinds of things with that. And it isn't gonna be enough to say, (crying) "You've taken that out of context." We know what he's trying to do. He's trying to zero in and tell the middle class, "I'm thinking of you." But this repair the safety net stuff? The safety net is contributing to poverty. The safety net contributes to poverty. It does not solve it. We've got proof every year since the Great Society and whatever else Johnson named it, starting in the sixties.

As such, Limbaugh's point was that Romney by praising safety nets for the poor was sounding like a liberal and not a conservative who thinks these entitlements are harming the society.

With all the things conservatives have to be concerned with regarding the former Massachusetts governor, him coming out in favor of safety nets complicates matters further.

But that's not what this MSNBC host imparted to his viewers.

Quite the contrary, by editing out significant portions of Limbaugh's commentary, O'Donnell made it seem that Rush agreed with him and the rest of the liberal media on why what Romney said earlier in the day was wrong.

As we've been saying for months, the press are going to do anything to get Obama reelected including cherry-picking conservatives to make it seem even the Right opposes the Republican candidate.

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In his Sunday column, Washington Post ombudsman Patrick Pexton agreed with readers who felt the Post “downsized” the massive “March for Life” by failing to show broad crowd shots. Pexton quoted AP that it’s “consistently one of the largest protests of the year in Washington” and “One observer e-mailed that he stood at the Supreme Court and it took marchers two hours to walk by. That’s a big crowd.”

Pexton failed to compare this massive crowd – and the Post’s failure to write more than one story (in Metro) on it – to the Post’s slobbering love affair with the Occupy DC protests that have spread far and wide across the liberal newspaper. Pexton found the Post photo editor sneering that pro-lifers can never be pleased:

But no one knows how big it was….Still, you can find images of the large crowd taken by amateurs on Flickr or Facebook, and I imagine the AP took some, too. Probably Post photographers did as well.

But these shots didn’t find their way into the main Web photo gallery on the march. And I think this is where The Post fell down in its coverage of the march this year. And that’s mostly what antiabortion readers wrote to me about.

The online photo gallery contains 10 photos: seven tight shots of antiabortion demonstrators, two of protesters from the small abortion-rights counter-demonstration on the steps of the Supreme Court and one that showed both sides confronting each other there. In fact, eight of the 10 shots were taken at the high court.

Emotional shots make better photos, yes, but I would have chosen more from the broad expanse of the rally, and at least one photo showing a lot of cheerful, festive people, which is what I see at most demonstrations that I have covered over the years, regardless of the issue at hand.

Vernon Loeb, Post Local editor, said, “In retrospect I wish we had given readers a better sense of the overall magnitude of the march. . .it was far larger than 17,000.”

Said Post Director of Photography Michel du Cille, “We can never please this crowd. We try for fairness to show both sides."

Pexton did not directly address the idea that it's unfair to give even-Steven coverage to a protest with 50,000 pro-lifers and 11 counter-protesters.

When he came to reporter Katherine Driessen's article he said some readers complained it "concentrated too much on teenage marchers and their beliefs arising from seeing graphic photos of fetuses, as if they were being brainwashed. That’s unfair. Driessen and her editors decided on this angle for the story because part of this year’s event was a major youth rally, and Catholic churches have been recruiting young people to the antiabortion cause. The crowd indeed was young. I think that’s a legitimate angle on a story."

But does Pexton not know that this angle could be used every year? This was just as true in 2005 as it was in 2012. The main (lame) counter-criticism arguing in favor of ignoring the March for Life is that it's an annual routine, and therefore not "news," no matter how many attend. The youth Mass and focus on the young is part of that routine. The attendance of so many young people is important to pro-lifers and inspiring to them, but it's an annual thing.

Pexton ignored one angle that was fresh this year: Speaker John Boehner spoke from the podium, which he has not done in recent years. That drew no mention in the Post story, nor did any other speaker from the March program.

Pexton agreed with our complaint of the repetitive citation of "antiabortion ideology" in the piece:

Driessen handled her quotes from the teens straightforwardly. I wish, however, she had not used the term “antiabortion ideology” to describe their position. Better to say antiabortion beliefs, position or stance. The word “ideology” has, unfortunately, become freighted with negative baggage.

When Pexton addressed the flood of Occupy DC stories two weeks ago, he cited the conservative complaints of overcoverage, but did not agree with it. However tiny it may be, the mere fact that someone was camping for socialism made it perennially newsworthy:

It is small and even tiny — probably less than 150 people — but people around the country, and the world, share the protesters’ concerns and follow the movement closely, judging by the ombudsman’s mailbag….Occupiers might be there awhile. And The Post should be too.

In the latest edition of National Review (dated February 6), comedy writer Rob Long knocks the political shtick of Stephen Colbert. He says Colbert causes a certain kind of “LOL” or laughing out loud – “mostly, they’re not laughting. They may be smiling wryly, or nodding in agreement, or noting in a subdued fashion the wit behind the statement, but they’re not laughing out loud. They’re agreeing.”

In short, they're awarding Clever Points, which is different than guffawing. Long finds the whole shtick "geriatric" in tone:

Stephen Colbert – and his partner on Comedy Central, Jon Stewart – hew to a fairly predictable lefty line. It’s not MSNBC left, or The Nation left – though they earn a lot of LOLs from that crowd, no doubt. It’s more along the lines of the Good Taste Left – NPR, The New Yorker, that sort of thing. Which is why the whole idea has a certain geriatric quality to it. What Colbert is trying to do, or his pompous persona that represents, to his LOLing viewers, a sharply etched blend of the entire lineup of Fox News, is mock the primary process and the idea of Super PACs especially.

Oh, my aching sides…

Long then explained Colbert's "Mitt the Ripper" ad — that if Romney believes corporations are people, he's a serial killer. He's not amused:

Look, if this kind of thing is funny to you, then don’t let me stand in your way. Go ahead and LOL all you want. But notice, if you would, that you’re not actually laughing. No one has caused those involuntary explosions of breath to burp unexpectedly from deep inside you. Nothing snuck up on you. It’s exactly what you expect from Stephen Colbert. He’s a liberal pretending to be a conservative – you can tell that instantly, because he’s playing a moron – and all conservatives are morons, see? – and he’s rich enough to set up a real super PAC to mock arcane campaign-finance rules and the current Republican front-runner.

It’s not funny. It’s what we call “NPR funny.” And predictably, the Good Taste Liberals are eating it up. The rest of us, not so much.

As for Comedy Central shows, Long wrote he preferred Tosh.0, which makes him actually LOL.

Playing off the “best picture” nominated motion picture, The Artist, ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live on Tuesday night created its own version of the black and white silent movie – but with a twist, using video clips from NBC’s Republican presidential debate of the night before.

FNC ended Thursday’s Special Report with the pretty inventive video created by Kimmel’s staff. Bret Baier set it up by suggesting the Republican candidates “are trying a new tactic and they’re taking to heart a long ago era, a different kind of movie.”

Previous “Saturday Night Funny Video” which played off of a Republican presidential debate:
“Saturday Night Funny Video: ‘ObamaCare,’ ‘ObamaCare,’ ‘ObamaCare,’ ‘ObamaCare,’ Then Herman Cain…”

On the "Grapevine" section of Friday night's Special Report, Fox News anchor Bret Baier reported the MRC's findings on how the networks covered this year's "March for Life" — or, to be more precise,  how they skipped it. Once again, ABC, CBS, and NBC aired nothing on the thousands and thousands of pro-life protesters marching to the Supreme Court on the 39th anniversary of the high court legalizing abortion.

"If you were listening to the Big Three broadcast networks, you wouldn’t have heard a peep about the event," said Baier. "You would have been in the dark, too, if you were reading the print version of The New York Times. Not one word." Fox asked me for a quote which then appeared on screen: (Video below)

They can't seem to locate tens of thousands of people clogging the streets of Washington to protest abortion on demand. These tens of thousands bravely keep coming to the capital in all kinds of bad weather every January, fully aware that the supposedly objective national media will pretend they don't exist.

This is quite a contrast to how ABC, CBS, and NBC offered a staggering 81 news stories in October to left-wing Occupy Wall Street activists. In fact,  the Occupy protests are still getting mentions, even in the weekend leading up the Monday protest. There was Saturday’s Good Morning America on ABC:

RON CLAIBORNE, anchor: And Occupy San Francisco protests turned  violent last night. Windows were smashed at a car dealership. And a  group of protesters took over an abandoned hotel. At least 18 people  arrested on a day that started with peaceful protests and people chaining themselves to bank buildings.

NBC offered this story on Friday’s Today before the Monday march:

NATALIE MORALES, anchor: Protesters say they will occupy the areas around federal courthouses in more than 100 cities today. They're marking the second anniversary of a ruling that removed most limits on spending by corporations and unions in federal elections.

On NBC's Saturday Today, we did get this abortion mention from reporter Michael Isikoff, digging up unfavorable information on Rick Santorum’s wife: "But the very next day, Karen Santorum was facing scrutiny herself. Newsweek reported that before she married Santorum, she had a six-year live-in relationship with a Pittsburgh abortion doctor 40 years her senior."

On Monday, Fox's "Special Report" sent Shannon Bream to provide a more-than-two-minute report on the March, complete with quotes from House Speaker John Boehner on one side and NARAL Pro-Choice America chief Nancy Keenan on the other.

USA Today and the Los Angeles Times joined the New York Times in failing to report on the March.

Would someone please buy the Washington Post's Josh White a clue? He can't seem to get a handle on the "motive" for the actions of Yonathan Melaku (actually, I think White is pretending).

Melaku has just pleaded guilty and will be sentenced to 25 years in jail. Authorities say he vandalized military grave markers, shot at the Pentagon and military museums, and was working on an improvised explosive device. But the headline to White's story (HT Atlas Shrugs) and the reporter's content act as if no one has the foggiest idea what drop Melaku to do what he did (words which betray motivation are bolded):

---

Motive of shooter who targeted military sites is unclear

Yonathan Melaku was sneaking through Fort Myer and Arlington National Cemetery, his backpack filled with plastic bags of ammonium nitrate, a notebook containing jihadist messages, and a can of black spray paint. The 23-year-old former Marine was heading to the graves of the nation’s most recent heroes, aiming to desecrate the stones with Arabic statements and leave handfuls of explosive material nearby as a message.

Before police foiled the plan in June, the vandalism was to be Melaku’s sixth attack, months after he went on a mysterious shooting spree that targeted the Pentagon, the National Museum of the Marine Corps and two other military buildings in Northern Virginia. A video found after Melaku’s arrest showed him wearing a black mask and shooting a 9mm handgun out of his Acura’s passenger window as he drove along Interstate 95, shouting “Allahu Akbar!”It was all part of a solitary campaign of “fear and terror,” federal prosecutors said.

But authorities and Melaku’s defense attorney said no one knows for sure what led Melaku — a naturalized U.S. citizen from Ethi­o­pia, local high school graduate and former Marine Corps Reservist — down that path or what message he was trying to send.

Melaku stood in U.S. District Court in Alexandria on Thursday morning to plead guilty to three counts, including shooting at the Pentagon on Oct. 19, 2010, and attempting to injure veterans’ memorials on U.S. property. As part of a plea agreement, Melaku admitted to using his legally obtained 9mm handgun to shoot the National Museum of the Marine Corps, the Pentagon and two military recruiting offices in October and November 2010.

The agreement calls for Melaku to serve 25 years in prison. Judge Gerald Bruce Lee accepted the plea, and Melaku is scheduled for sentencing on April 27.

Although Melaku acknowledged shooting at the buildings — attacks that did not injure anyone but caused an estimated $111,000 in damage — it still remains unclear why he did it. In a video entered into evidence and released by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia, Melaku says that he was targeting the museum as a military building, to “turn it off permanently.”

FBI officials and prosecutors said Melaku was on a personal terror mission. They said he researched jihadism on the Internet and had references to terrorism in a notebook and on his computer. It also seemed like he was gathering materials to make an improvised explosive device, though there was no indication how he would have used it.

Melaku wanted “to create fear and terror, which is what terrorists do,” said Dana Boente, first assistant U.S. Attorney in Alexandria.

… Gregory English, Melaku’s defense lawyer, said after the hearing that Melaku’s family is of the Coptic Christian faith and that they were stunned to learn of his involvement in the crimes and the references to Islamic jihad.

Dictionary.com carries two primary definitions of "motive":

1. something that causes a person to act in a certain way, do a certain thing, etc.; incentive.
2. the goal or object of a person's actions: Her motive was revenge.

White and WaPo really don't have any wiggle room here. Anyone with an ounce of sense will also know that even if they are banking on the first version of the definition to controlling, they can't really claim that "motive" hasn't been identified. The evidence based on the material presented is that exposure to and adoption of jihadist teachings caused Melaku "to act in a certain way." We don't have to sit the guy down on a couch and ask about his family history to know this.

It seems like the Washington Post and most of the establishment press is so bound and determined to look the other way and otherwise minimize how the very real and intensely dangerous phenomenon known as homegrown terror has arisen. Jihad is the motivation, and that's all we really need to know.

Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.

One of the Media Research Center's dearest friends and supporters, Mark Levin, has a new book out called “Ameritopia.”

On Tuesday, the esteemed author and radio host spoke to NewsBusters by phone about the book's contents and how the media are assisting powerful utopian forces in America to undermine our Constitutional republic (video follows with complete transcript, don't miss spectacular book signing video at article's conclusion):

NEWSBUSTERS: Mark Levin is a lawyer, author, and host of one of the nation’s most popular syndicated radio programs. His book “Liberty and Tyranny” was on the New York Times bestseller list for eight months, three at number one, and was Amazon’s second bestseller in 2009. An expert in Constitutional law, Levin is a loyal supporter and dear friend of the Media Research Center. His new book “Ameritopia” takes readers through the various utopian concepts proffered by Plato, Thomas More, Thomas Hobbes, and Karl Marx demonstrating that despite their notorious failings, America has been moving in this direction for almost a century and is dangerously close to never coming back. We are very pleased to have Mark with us at NewsBusters to discuss his compelling new book. Welcome, Mark.

MARK LEVIN: Noel, a great pleasure. I appreciate all the work you do, my friend.

NEWSBUSTERS: Thank you, sir. You as well. My first question is a bit tongue-in-cheek. I think you’ll find it a tad humorous. Despite your last book “Liberty and Tyranny” spending many months on the New York Times bestseller list, they never reviewed it. You think they’ll review this one?

LEVIN: Well, you know, if they do I'm sure it won't be very favorable. Whether they review it or not is almost irrelevant because I barely read the New York Times anymore, let alone that particular section of the New York Times. So, my goal is to address my audience, reach beyond where we can to people who are somewhat open-minded or aren't sure what they believe, and my guess is most of the people who read the New York Times are people who are in that utopian camp. Whether it's reviewed or not is no matter to me.

NEWSBUSTERS: Why do you think they don't typically review conservative authors?

LEVIN: Because they are exactly what we've said they are for years. They are mouthpieces for the Left, and for the most part when they do review conservative authors, they trash them, or they nitpick them and cherry-pick aspects of their books. So I don't care if they review my book or not. It is totally irrelevant.

NEWSBUSTERS: I don't imagine you're expecting "Good Morning America," the "Today" show or the "Early Show" to give you a call and let you speak about your book.

LEVIN: They've not contacted us and we're not contacting them, and that's pretty much the way it worked with “Liberty and Tyranny.” They never contacted us and we pretty much didn't contact them. If they want to go out of their way to contact me and invite me on and have a little debate, that's perfectly fine, but I don't need them, and obviously they don't need me.

NEWSBUSTERS: There you go. Well, in your introduction, you wrote, “Utopianism has long promoted the idea of a paradisiacal existence and advanced concepts of pseudo ‘ideal’ societies in which a heroic despot, a benevolent sovereign, or an enlightened oligarchy claims the ability and authority to provide all the needs and fulfill all the wants of the individual – in exchange for his abject servitude.” Does this describe Barack Obama and all of his followers including in the media?

LEVIN: Well, it absolutely does, and in his State of the Union speech it will be clear as with his past State of the Union speeches, with most of his past speeches. Obama holds himself up as a mastermind. He's not one, but he holds himself up as one, and only because he has power and he has an ideology. And even though his ideology is generally understood and can be generally defined, it's not well thought out by him.

So, like most masterminds, he has a general idea where he wants to drag this country, although he's a little short on specifics from time to time, and his target is to reshape, to mold the individual, in fact to destroy the nature of the individual so that he can build in essence an army of followers – the masses as they like to call them – in pursuit of a fantasy. And the fantasy is this notion of a so-called paradise which requires individuals to surrender their liberty and surrender their private property rights, basically to surrender their free will in order to accommodate this abstraction that Obama and others have. And there's no end to it, because once you're unmoored from the Constitution, as we are in so many ways today, then we are moored to this abstraction that a mastermind has and is promoting.

In Obama's case, he borrows a little bit from Plato's “Republic,” a little bit from Thomas More's “Utopia,” and Thomas Hobbes' “Leviathan,” and Karl Marx and Engels' “Communist Manifesto.” Now, he may not do it wittingly, and he may do it unwittingly, but in either event it is extremely destructive. You cannot have these notions of utopianism dressed up as a humane type of ideal society and constitutionalism. You cannot have 310 million individuals who are mostly free to pursue their own interests and live their own lives and at the same time have a centralized government with increasingly concentrated power which is telling people what to do in matters big and small.

NEWSBUSTERS: Staying with that theme, do you see the desire for a utopia stemming from laziness and cowardice? Aren’t people who strive for such a system just wanting less work and personal responsibility?

LEVIN: It's a number of things depending on the people and the groups of people we're talking about. For instance, there are a number of malcontents in this country who blame the existing society and system quote-unquote for their own personal failures. And so they are largely disconnected from the existing society. There are also those who benefit greatly from the policies of the masterminds and their utopian endeavors such as crony capitalists among others. So they favor utopianism greatly because they benefit personally from it.

There are those who unfortunately are more in the Pollyanna or blissfully ignorant school who really aren't paying attention, aren't engaged, haven't been roused by what's going on, and they do not necessarily see this much as a threat because it is sold to them in a rather mild way – not as a trespass on their liberties or their private property rights. So it's a combination of all these things, and I thought it was very important to dig into this because it can be a very alluring philosophy for so many millions of people while it's destroying their nature. And that is the nature of utopianism.

NEWSBUSTERS: Interesting. Early on, you also quoted Eric Hoffer who wrote, “For men to plunge headlong into an undertaking of vast change, they must be intensely discontented yet not destitute, and they must have the feeling that by the possession of some potent doctrine, infallible leader or some new technique they have access to a source of irresistible power.” How well does this describe the nation after the financial crisis of 2008, and how important was that to Obama’s victory?

LEVIN: Well, I think it describes the hard-left utopians period, and always has. Look, the financial crisis, we always have some crisis in this country whether it's a real crisis or a manufactured crisis. The government likes to sabotage various industries, and it sabotaged the financial industry with the Community Reinvestment Act, which is a long story I wrote about in “Liberty and Tyranny” and don't need to get into right now. But, the fact is where you find most economic dislocation or failure you find the heavy hand of the federal government.

So, to answer your question, the crises that are used are either made by the federal government or they happen naturally and the mastermind seizes on them to further centralize government and seize power. The problem is that when that ends it ends in an increasingly tyrannical society because the problems that are created by government are further exacerbated because the people who are trying to deal with the problems in government do not have the knowledge and not necessarily the best interests of the population generally in what they're trying to achieve.

What is it exactly, for instance, Barack Obama brings to the table about healthcare? He's not an expert, he doesn't have great knowledge on the subject. He brings ideology. He brings a conceit. He brings his own self-interest. Milton Friedman once said, and I paraphrase, “Why is it nobler for politicians to make political decisions than for individuals to make economic decisions?” It's a great statement that applies certainly to this circumstance.

NEWSBUSTERS: Well, you know of course Obama promised to unite the nation, but as you wrote, utopianism “assigns [individuals] a group identity based on race, ethnicity, age, gender, income, etc., to highlight differences within the masses. It then exacerbates old rivalries and disputes or it incites new ones.” So, despite the claims of unity, in reality that's not what utopians are after at all is it?

LEVIN: No it's not, and you can hear it today. Again, in the State of the Union speech, Obama will talk about fairness, fairness, and fairness again while he's trashing successful, independent and industrious people who produce all kinds of wealth for our society and all kinds of services for our society that the people want. He's going to trash those people, and he has to because those people demonstrate that society can in fact function properly, that there are people who do succeed in this society. But when you have an individual such as Obama who seeks to fundamentally transform this society – meaning he rejects it, meaning he doesn't like it, meaning his conduct is going to be un-Constitutional because he doesn't have the power as president under the Constitution to fundamentally transform our nation – you're going to see more and more of that kind of behavior and that kind of propaganda.

So of course he's not interested in uniting. This is the other thing about the utopian push for this endless statism. It's the perversion of language. So while they pretend to speak for the quote-unquote middle class which we can't even find, while they pretend to stand for the little guy, while they pretend to stand for hard work and individual values and so forth, they stand for none of that. They stand for in fact a top down authoritarian system where a relative handful of people have this ideal society in mind which always involves the destruction of man's nature, to mold man to accommodate their abstraction.

And so that is what's going on today, that is what has gone on since the beginning of mankind. And that is why what we did in this country, what the Founders did in this country is so unique, so marvelous, such a blessing that it is my hope that in this book “Ameritopia” when I define and explain the philosophies that underlay our view of individual sovereignty and constitutionalism and consent of the governed and the nature of man versus their view, these phony ideal societies that even Plato couldn't create, the idea of uniformity and conformity, and the idea of class warfare or an all-powerful sovereign where we're subjects will be exposed for what it is and people will fear it.

NEWSBUSTERS: Speaking of the Founders, you quoted Jefferson, and I love this quote: “All the powers of government, legislative, executive, and judiciary, result to the legislative body. The concentrating of these in the same hands is precisely the definition of despotic government. It will be no alleviation that these powers will be exercised by a plurality of hands, and not by a single one. 173 despots would surely be as oppressive as one…An elective despotism was not the government we fought for.”

LEVIN: Yep. And later on, about a half century later, Alexis de Tocqueville said exactly the same thing. And before both of those men, others said exactly the same thing including Charles de Montesquieu. The point being that the fact that you vote doesn't mean you don't have despotism. The fact that you have a legislature and an assembly of some kind again doesn't mean you don't have despotism. You can vote for your despots. And the point is that at some point unfortunately in democracies the power structure is such that when you vote, so much of what you vote about has nothing to do with what happens.

I'll give you an example. We've this massive fourth branch of government, this administrative state, massive bureaucracy, untold numbers of people doing untold numbers of things in untold numbers of agencies who are issuing regulations that have the force of law that have financial penalties and criminal penalties where people can go to prison with strict liability. We don't know who they are, we don't know what they're up to, we don't know how they come to their conclusions.

And the point is that we've elected a congress, we've elected the president, and yet here we have this big monument to despotism in effect which has incredible power on our daily lives. And so there's a huge disconnect between us voting and what happens in this society and how we're governed. And this is why I came up with the title of the book “Ameritopia” because you and I and others, we are fighting to get back to the America that is based on the Constitution and the concepts of individual sovereignty and so forth.

This country cannot be called today strictly a constitutional republic, a representative republic or a federal republic because it's been turned upside-down. The states have very little authority vis-a-vis the federal government. The individual is getting smothered in this massive leviathan, and those things that Jefferson feared, the Founders feared, Alexis de Tocqueville after him feared, and the great enlightened philosophers feared are coming to pass.

NEWSBUSTERS: Isn’t it also interesting that although all of the utopias you wrote about provide universal healthcare for their people, they also all encourage the sick or infirm to commit suicide or just die off? So despite what the media said, Sarah Palin was right about death panels?

LEVIN: Isn't that interesting? In Plato's “Republic,” in Thomas More's “Utopia,” in supposedly humanistic, compassionate societies, and so forth, yes, national government-run healthcare is key to all of these societies because they want complete control over the individual body and soul. And, yes, they encourage people to end their own lives, or at least not seek medical care if they have these terrible diseases or illnesses and cannot be contributors to the society as a whole, because remember now, under the utopian notion, it is society as a whole, it is government as a whole, it is an ideology that is paramount to everything else. The individual is inconsequential. The individual has no worth in and of himself. Self-interest is to be denounced as it is in our society in many respects.

NEWSBUSTERS: The other interesting hypocrisy to me is a common theme in all these utopias: men can’t be trusted to govern themselves. But if this is true, how can a president, ruler, or legislature of men be trusted?

LEVIN: Well, I kind of get to that in the book. Men cannot be trusted to govern themselves, but they are trusted to vote for their guardians. Yet they're not wise enough to pick their own light bulbs. And this is what it's become. And of course man is so bad, so imperfect, so evil, except of course for the few who manage to get power and rule over the rest of his fellow men. So, the whole notion is a notion of totalitarianism, and that's the point. It's totalitarianism in form and substance, and the question is what degree of totalitarianism are people willing to tolerate.

NEWSBUSTERS: Another interesting aspect, you quoted de Tocqueville: “In America the aristocratic element has always been feeble from its birth; and if at the present day it is not actually destroyed, it is at any rate so completely disabled that we can scarcely assign to it any degree of influence on the course of affairs.” With the current Occupy movement and the media’s incessant contention that the wealthy have undue influence in America today especially in light of the Citizens’ United decision, would de Tocqueville make this same observation if he were here today?

LEVIN: Oh, absolutely. In fact, he'd be appalled as would the Founders by what's happened to this great country. The aristocracy in this country today, I would argue, are the politicians and the bureaucrats who have the power of law to do lawless things, and the robber barons of this country today aren't individual industrialists. They are the individuals in Congress and in the Administration who have access to enormous amounts of wealth, not necessarily to enhance their own status financially, but in order to remake society, in order to coerce people, in order to sabotage various private sector entities and so forth. So they're actually even worse than the old robber barons in that they not only have enormous wealth that doesn't belong to them, they have the power of the law to do as they see fit with that enormous wealth.

NEWSBUSTERS: You also wrote, “For the utopian, it is better that all be poor than some be wealthy.”

LEVIN: Right.

NEWSBUSTERS: Does this describe the feeling of today’s Left as well as the Occupy movement and the media?

LEVIN: It absolutely does. It is this mindless, destructive pursuit of radical egalitarianism. You see it in Thomas More's “Utopia,” you see it in the “Communist Manifesto,” and you see it in the modern Democrat Party. You see, we can never be truly equal. There will never be equal incomes period. Mankind has demonstrated that through experience. There will never be free healthcare for everybody of the same exact quality no matter what. It's simply not going to happen. And these plans that they come up with are not only impracticable, but they're impossible. And yet they're put out there as these promises, these future promises where these masterminds say they're going to deliver these things, and of course they can't and they won't. They deliver the opposite: destitution, misery, and poverty.

But all that said, I think that today we're in an extremely perilous situation because if I had to guess, I'd guess 40 percent or more of the American people have surrendered to this ideology, or they've been conquered by it, bought off by it through entitlements and so forth, or through coercion, administrative coercion through bureaucracies. And the issue to me is whether there is time to save the republic or whether the mindset, the psychology of the American people has been so trounced and so altered that politically it will be impossible to reverse course.

NEWSBUSTERS: Well, that's why I would ask you if there are any real anti-utopians left in America? 80 years after the New Deal, aren’t we all utopians to some degree? Look at the Tea Party signs that we saw, “Keep Your Hands Off of My Medicare,” “Keep Your Hands Off of My Social Security.” Aren’t we all now on a utopian slippery slope that can’t be stopped given the number of citizens – even conservatives – now dependent upon the existing utopian legislation?

LEVIN: Those signs were the exception at the Tea Party rallies. I went to several of them. The Tea Party rallies were not about Medicare, were not about entitlements. They were about the opposite. They were about constitutionalism.

I can't answer your question whether or not we will survive as a nation. All I can tell you is that those of us aware of what's going on need to fight like hell to try and preserve it because it's worth preserving, and if we cannot preserve it, then I don't know what mankind's going to look like in the future. I cannot believe as I say in “Ameritopia” that as inheritors of such a magnificent society that we are prepared to send our children and grandchildren and all future generations into infinite darkness. I just cannot believe it. And so we shall see.

I cannot predict the future, but I am very hopeful that “Ameritopia” will help get the message out to at least some people so they understand the philosophical roots of individual sovereignty, of constitutionalism of this great society, and will also understand the philosophical roots of the tyranny that seeks to devour it. And I am of the opinion that more and more people who get to those roots beyond the superficial, who go beyond the Founders, who go beyond Obama, and who really look deeply into what's gone on in the history of mankind and then apply it to what's going on today, I think we have a chance.

NEWSBUSTERS: You argue in “Ameritopia's" concluding chapter that if the Supreme Court doesn’t strike down the individual mandate in ObamaCare, “the contours of utopian society and the mastermind’s authority would seem unconfined. Thereafter, the individual’s free will ceases to be free or his will?” Please elaborate.

LEVIN: Well, that's correct because at this point we would have all three branches of government – the legislative, executive and the judicial – conspiring openly against the individual, against “we the people,” against the citizen. And what I mean by this is the utopians who push this statist agenda, this top down authoritarianism if not totalitarianism and dress it up as a democracy movement, or dress it up as some kind of a compassionate program, they won't have to dress anything up anymore because if the Supreme Court gives itself and the rest of the federal government the power to push around and bully and order the individual to do things that the individual does not want to do, then it no longer has to use the carrot. It can use the stick. That's the point.

NEWSBUSTERS: Indeed. And you mentioned that the Tea Party certainly is the positive force. The utopian force right now would you agree is pretty much embodied not just in the media but in the Occupy movement, and this is where the battle for America's future, the Americans versus the Ameritopians is being waged?

LEVIN: The Occupy movement is a very tiny movement that is just a reflection of what's been going on in this country. The Tea Party movement is really a great perhaps last stand for constitutionalism, which is why the utopians hate it so much and disparage it endlessly. And yet it gives people like me hope.

We are in an Ameritopia right now. We're not transitioning into an Ameritopia, we are here. The question is how far down this course are we going to go? And I don't think it is virtuous or noble to pretend otherwise. I don't think it is helpful if some conservatives or some Libertarians pretend otherwise.

This is an extremely perilous period in our history, and the utopian notions have taken a firm hold. And the question is, as I said earlier, can we reacquaint ourselves with the original mindset of the American people or whether we've been so thoroughly duped that there's no hope? I believe that we still have an opportunity, but the hour is very late.

NEWSBUSTERS: And why do you think America's media are so on board with the utopians and always have been?

LEVIN: Because they are one and the same. The fact that they're in the media not in the government is irrelevant. When you look at Thomas Friedman, three-time Pulitzer Prize winner writing in the New York Times, he's constantly flirting with totalitarianism and rejecting the checks and balances that are built into our Constitutional system. The utopians are in a hurry. They're in a hurry to go somewhere they can't detail exactly where they want to take us, but they think they want to take us in that direction regardless. The Constitution – they condemn it all the time. During ObamaCare, people were asked about the Constitutional basis for ObamaCare. Members of Congress basically laughed. So, that's how I would answer your question.

NEWSBUSTERS: Anything else you want to tell our readers before I let you go?

LEVIN: I would tell them what I tell my radio audience – and I'm sure there's a lot of overlap in that regard – that is you have to view yourselves as the Paul and Paulette Reveres of this nation. The media's not going to do it. Certain politicians aren't going to do it. One election's not going to do it. We have to save ourselves from this utopian tyranny. The more we understand it, the more we inform ourselves, the more we can spread the word to our family members, our friends, our co-workers, our neighbors. If this society is going to survive, and if we are going to survive as a free people, it's up to us and nobody else.

NEWSBUSTERS: Well, Mark, speaking for everybody at the Media Research Center and all of our readers, we sincerely thank you for your hard work toward saving our nation, and thank you very, very much for your time today.

LEVIN: Noel, thank you for all you do, and the great Media Research Center, my buddy Brent Bozell and everybody else there. G-d bless you, my friend.

The following is a marvelous video from an “Ameritopia” book signing at a bookstore on Long Island last weekend:

Associate Editor’s note: As you are likely aware, since the financial collapse of 2008, charities and non-profit organizations have seen a sharp reduction in donations. Although the environment has improved, contributions are still nowhere near where they were prior to the recession. Unfortunately, the Media Research Center has not been immune. With this in mind, your support has become more important than ever. With a critical election approaching, the liberal media needs to be monitored 24/7. As we have been predicting for months, the press are willing to do anything to get their beloved politicians elected and/or reelected. As such, we need your help to fight this fight. Any contribution, even $10, is greatly appreciated. Please consider a tax-deductible gift to the Media Research Center to help us battle the liberal media. Thank you.

MSNBC's Martin Bashir spent a good part of his on air time Monday calling Republicans liars as he foolishly confused two extraordinarily simple pieces of economic data thereby making it he that was commiting a falsehood.

After calling Tea Party Express founder Judson Phillips a liar on his 3PM program, Bashir said the same thing about Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich on The Ed Show roughly five hours later while in both instances wrongly claiming there were more food stamp recipients when George W. Bush was president than there are now (video follows with transcript and commentary):

MARTIN BASHIR: Gingrich lies repeatedly. First of all, we know today that more people were collecting food stamps under George W. Bush than are under President Obama. So, that’s the first, something like a difference of about a half a million people.

What's amazing here is Bashir made exactly the same mistake as he did about five hours earlier.

As previously reported, the number of food stamp recipients is currently at an all-time high having grown 44 percent since Obama was inaugurated.

Unfortunately, much like his colleague Al Sharpton did on Saturday, Bashir is confusing two pieces of data and seems incapable of getting it right even with five hours to do so.

Having seen NewsBusters article about his mistake earlier in the day, Bashir responded via Twitter:

As USA Today reported Wednesday:

Newt Gingrich claims that "more people have been put on food stamps by Barack Obama than any president in American history." He's wrong. More were added under Bush than under Obama, according to the most recent figures.

That's correct. Although we only have numbers through last October, food stamp recipients have grown by 14.2 million under Obama. During Bush's two terms the increase was 14.7 million.

This is what Bashir was referring to when he said "something like a difference of about a half a million people."

But, much as he did earlier, Bashir confused the two pieces of data saying "we know today that more people were collecting food stamps under George W. Bush than are under President Obama."

Not true. What "we know today" is that as of October 2011, there were 46.2 million people on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program as compared to only 32 million when Obama was inaugurated.

We also know that 500,000 more folks joined SNAP during Bush's eight years than in Obama's first 32 months. 

Unfortunately, the overbearingly smug and condescending Bashir seems incapable of differentiating these two pieces of data and properly reporting them to his albeit tiny audience.

As Scarlett O'Hara said at the end of Gone With the Wind, tomorrow is another day.

Associate Editor’s note: As you are likely aware, since the financial collapse of 2008, charities and non-profit organizations have seen a sharp reduction in donations. Although the environment has improved, contributions are still nowhere near where they were prior to the recession. Unfortunately, the Media Research Center has not been immune. With this in mind, your support has become more important than ever. With a critical election approaching, the liberal media needs to be monitored 24/7. As we have been predicting for months, the press are willing to do anything to get their beloved politicians elected and/or reelected. As such, we need your help to fight this fight. Any contribution, even $10, is greatly appreciated. Please consider a tax-deductible gift to the Media Research Center to help us battle the liberal media. Thank you.

Last Friday saw two high-profile liberal commentators – one on PBS's Inside Washington and the other on Bloomberg News's Political Capital – repeating the story that Newt Gingrich divorced his first wife while she was being treated for cancer, without either of them noting that one of Gingrich's daughters – Jackie Gingrich Cushman -  last May specifically disputed the account that her mother, who is still alive, ever had cancer, or that her father initiated the divorce during a hospital visit.

On Bloomberg News's Political Capital show, host Al Hunt only vaguely noted that Gingrich's daughter had disputed some of the details of her parents' divorce as he dismissed her account as "demonstrably false." After Bloomberg News columnist Margaret Carlson called the former House Speaker a "lout," Hunt asserted:

He left his first wife when she had cancer, she took him to court for lack of child support. This is all public record. He had a six-year affair while he was Speaker with a young House staffer. He left his second wife when she had MS. And he sent his daughter out to tell a demonstrably false story about his first marriage. Now, all that amounts up to more than a lout, doesn't it, Margaret?

On the same day's Inside Washington on PBS, regular panel member Shields recounted the story without any mention that it is disputed, as he cracked:

He did not mention the fact that his wife – who in sort of a sad interview with (ABC's) Brian Ross – acknowledged that she had just told him she had Multiple Sclerosis. This is not a man you want to tell that you have a health problem, based upon his first divorce when his wife had cancer, and let's pray that Callista gets a very positive report from Mayo clinic.