N&O’s Stark Editorial Silence

On April 10, 2005 the liberal/leftist Raleigh News & Observer ran an editorial titled "Judges Under Fire." Here’s part of it:

[Senate leader Bill Frist] has drawn a line between himself and firebrands such as Rep. Tom DeLay, the GOP leader in the House, and DeLay's fellow Texan, Sen. John Cornyn. They have talked in terms of retribution, or unspecified kinds of judicial accountability, after federal judges at three levels chose against intervening in the Terri Schiavo case. …

Cornyn, who once sat on the Texas Supreme Court, went so far as to wonder aloud if recent court-related violence could be connected to the public's frustration with a judiciary that is not sufficiently accountable. …

The N&O, without ever quoting anything Cornyn and DeLay actually said, went on to call their statements “inflammatory” and again remind readers of violence directed at judges.

The editorial ended by castigating the two Republicans for “raining fire and brimstone on judicial independence.” According to the N&O, the “anti-judge rhetoric” was “damaging to the American justice system.”

I thought when I read the editorial that it was motivated by the N&O’s intense Democratic partisanship. I hadn’t read anything Cornyn and DeLay had said that could fairly be linked to recent killings of judges.

Everything each man had said was well within the bounds of what’s tradionally been accepted as part of our public discourse.

Cornyn and DeLay did talk about and encourage citizens to vote for or against a judge based on how they felt about h/her record.

But that doesn’t damage “the American justice system;” it affirms it.

The N&O itself at each judicial election picks and chooses among judicial candidates. It criticizes the careers and decisions of many of them; and urges readers to vote against some while voting for those on the N&O’s “approved” list.

Then the N&O turns around and attacks Republicans for doing the same thing.

That kind of double standard is just what many, me included, have come to expect from the Democratic N&O.

So I guess I should have expected that when Democratic House member Pete Stark said on the House floor,

"You don't have money to fund the war or children, but you're going to spend it to blow up innocent people if we can get enough kids to grow old enough for you to send to Iraq to get their heads blown off for the President's amusement,"

that the N&O would say nothing critical of him.

Afterall, President Bush is a Republican. Democrats routinely equate him to Hitler. That being the case, I guess the N&O editors could read what Stark said and decide it was nothing more than mainstream Democratic rhetoric.

Still, I’d hoped, given the inflammatory nature of Stark’s attack and the high degree of threat to his life every President faces, that the N&O would put aside its partisanship and say something critical of Stark.

But it hasn’t so far.

Does that surprise any of you, especially Democrats, reading this?