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How does one define "politicized?" Everyone likely remembers how the left cried "politicization" over the Bush Administration decision to can several Assistant AG's because they did not follow up on voting rights cases. But every administration prioritizes classes of cases that they want to see Justice pursue. What Bush did was nothing different. That certainly did not stop the left wing spin machine from howling "politicization." But if the word politicization is to have any meaning, it must be something more far more insidious than merely setting priorities. It must mean lawlessness, unequal application of the law, or falsifying facts for political reasons. And we are seeing numerous outrageous examples of it from within the bowels of the Obama and Clinton Administrations - as well as, of course, the MSM.
First there was Elena Kagan, currently undergoing hearings as Obama's nominee to the Supreme Court. When she worked in the Clinton White House, in an effort to justify Clinton's veto of a law banning partial birth abortion, she was involved in the alteration of an American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology report. ACOG could find no set of circumstances where late term partial birth abortion was necessary to preserve the health of the mother. But Kagan herself added the language 'the partial-birth-abortion procedure “may be the best or most appropriate procedure in a particular circumstance to save the life or preserve the health of a woman.'" Read the whole story here and here. ACOG amazingly remained silent after the alteration and for years it went not merely unpublicized, but Kagan's language served as the basis for several court rulings. In short, Kagan was part of a major fraud involving the politicization of science.
Then there was Obama Interior Dept. which, a few weeks ago, convened a panel of experts on offshore oil drilling. At the conclusion of the panel, the Interior Dept. forwarded the experts a draft of a report for their approval. Only after receiving the expert's approval did the Interior Dept. insert into the final report the lie that these experts supported Obama's decision to impose a six month moratorium on offshore oil drilling. Fortunately these experts, unlike the AOGC, chose to immediately point out the falsity.
The above are casebook examples of the politicization of science. But then there is politicizing the administration of our laws. If former career Justice Dept. Attorney J. Christian Adams is to be believed, that is precisely what is occurring.
Obama, who promised to lead us into post-racial America, instead has saddled us with a Justice Dept. that uses race to determine whether or not to apply the law. To be more specific, if you are black and engaged in voter intimidation or voter fraud, you may well get a free pass from Obama's Justice Dept. Do see this entire interview:
If possible, even more outrageous is that the Justice Dept. has refused to respond to lawful subpoenas from the Office of the Civil Rights Division seeking to investigate DOJ's unequal enforcement of the laws based on racial preferences. Apparently, the Justice Dept. is not only engaged in unequal application of the law, but holds itself to be above the law.
All of this should be not merely front page news across the nation, but is of the ilk that the press should be harping on until guilty parties are held liable. It is not, of course, because the MSM itself is politicized. Take for example the recent exposure of Ezra Klein's invitation only Journolist-site which brought together some 400 left wing members of the press. This from Andrew Breitbart:
Ezra Klein’s “JournoList 400” is the epitome of progressive and liberal collusion that conservatives, Tea Partiers, moderates and many independents have long suspected and feared exists at the heart of contemporary American political journalism. Now that collusion has been exposed when one of the weakest links in that cabal, Dave Weigel, was outed. Weigel was, in all likelihood, exposed because – to whoever the rat was who leaked his emails — he wasn’t liberal enough. . . .
I think we’ve seen a paradigm shift, and that the March 20 story will be remembered by conservatives as evidence of how the media accepts attacks on conservatives without due diligence. . . .
. . . The “JournoList” is the story: who was on it and which positions of journalistic power and authority do they hold? Now that the nature and the scope of the list has been exposed, I think the public has a right to know who shapes the big media narratives and how. . . .
As we already uncovered in our expose on the “Cry Wolf” project, members of academia and think tanks are actively working to form the narrative used by the press to thwart conservative messages. Like a ventriloquist’s dummy, the reporters on the listserv mimicked the talking points invented and agreed upon by the intellectuals who were invited to the virtual cocktail party that was Klein’s “JournoList.”
And let us not forget the participation of Media Matters in the larger picture of intimidation and mockery for any reporter, like Weigel, who dares stray from the one acceptable liberal narrative in the media. Flying its false flag as a “media watchdog,” the $10 million-or-so per year agitprop command center creates and promotes a system of conformity in which it relentlessly attacks anyone who strays from the Soros-funded party orthodoxy.
The deluge of intimidation showered upon the occasional heretic by Media Matters represent another distinct layer in the media infrastructure that ensures true believer liberals are overrepresented and conservatives had better watch their step.
The fact that 400 journalists did not recognize how wrong their collusion, however informal, was shows an enormous ethical blind spot toward the pretense of impartiality. As journalists actively participated in an online brainstorming session on how best to spin stories in favor of one party against another, they continued to cash their paychecks from their employers under the impression that they would report, not spin the agreed-upon “news” on behalf of their “JournoList” peers.
The American people, at least half of whom are the objects of scorn of this group of 400, deserve to know who was colluding against them so that in the future they can better understand how the once-objective media has come to be so corrupted and despised. . . .
So at any rate, if during the Bush years you were scratching your head wondering what the word "politicized" - a word splashing across your screen every few minutes - meant, well, now you have some real world examples to define the word for you. That is of course not the only difference between today and the Bush years. Today, you are hearing the word "politicized" a lot less, if at all. It must have fallen out of favor on Journolist.
