What we are seeing reflects recent poll numbers regarding the likelihood of having a President Obama next year vs. President McCain.

If a Democratic candidate is elected (Barak Obama), then naturally the Washington Post, and every other mainstream media outlet will suddenly become the most vigilant watchdogs of personal liberty and rectitude in the history of the US. They will be on guard for even the slightest stretch of the truth and apply the most rigorous standards of conduct, integrity and respect for human rights, within the US and abroad. They will also demand clear, 100% successful results in Iraq and Afghanistan within five weeks and will suddenly remember that Osama bin Laden has not been caught (FoxNews will start a “Days Free” counter on every newscast) nor has the anthrax mailer been identified.

Of course, if we have President McCain, there will be no media watchdog. Instead we will retain our current media lapdog, since “John McCain can’t be held responsible….”.

I for one welcome our Chinese Communist overlords.

"We don't think the public needs to know that." - WaPo.

Glenn, I accept your arguments as a cogent and well-argued position. I come to a different conclusion on the facts, and I think that you mostly try to criminalize policy differences.

Now I'm truly and honestly curious: what conclusions are you drawing from this laundry list of documented moral and legal atrocities?

And do you not agree some of the underlying policies are simply criminal to begin with?

But in this political season, there are candidates for you to choose from, who really do appear to oppose the entire "political class." Assuredly, Barack Obama is not one of those candidates.

Oh, I think most here are over what little puppy love was felt for Obama. That hardly makes him unpalatable.

Why do you, and your readers who are like-minded, not support a candidate who truly believes in a wholesale alternative to the current "political class"?

Perhaps because there is no such thing? That Ron Paul is, in his own way, no less frightening than John McCain? The Ralph Nader is, quite honestly, a clown past his prime? Neither of these worthies have creditability or capability to alter anything within Washington, either policywise or in the underlying dynamic.

Let's be honest: there always has been and always will be a "political class" that thinks itself removed and unaffected from the rest of the world. A single election will not change this and certainly won't introduce an entirely new order to things, either within US 395 or outside of it.

However Obama has made great strides in forming and nuturing a movement that stands a better chance of nudging things onto a slightly-less disasterous, slightly-more sane path. McCain and the rest offer nothing equalling it and really nothing worthwhile to offer. Hence the continued support (slightly tepid than before but still there) for Obama.

Now, pray explain how insisting the statutes of US law be applied equally and at all times constitutes "criminalizing policy differences". I sense you genuinely mean that and aren't just reading off a cue-card.

I'm quite serious here. Explain your thinking.

If they do it, it's bad. If we do it, it's good.

Call it exceptionalism or double-think, but rational discourse it is not.

When and if a Day of Accountability comes, these corporate journo-whores should be publicly humiliated for their eager fluffing of the Bush regime -- not that they seem capable of shame.

"I come to a different conclusion on the facts, and I think that you mostly try to criminalize policy differences." -- Elephantman

In Limbaugh-land and FOX-world, breaking the law may be called 'a policy difference', but in the reality-based community that nonsense is considered .. nonsense.

"OK, in the US, it's not the "state owned press", but rather the press owned by those with some of the most influential connections in government."

Influential connections, ie lobbyists who dictate laws and policies.

For "state owned press", substitute "press owned state!"

"I come to a different conclusion on the facts, and I think that you mostly try to criminalize policy differences."

The failsafe bridge for cognitive dissonance. Government breaking the law and then changing the law/immunizing against the law/pardoning the crime/commuting the punishment are policy options that are legal and valid. This allows a person to hold on to the belief that the government in question remains the legitimate authority and not culpable.

Kudos to Elephantman. That is probably exactly how Diehl thinks: Criticize abroad = standing up for principle. Criticize at home = "criminalize policy differences".

There is a condition in which behavior that you consider acceptable for you to do, you also consider morally and ethically wrong for others to do.

It is called sociopathy.

You forget that we're also the only ones who get to decide who are the good guys and who are the bad guys.

The Washington Post, along with Murdoch's empire, are leading advocates of mercantilism in the US. That explains both their political position and their willingness to lecture the rest of the world. Putin's government DARED to interfere in the SACRED American right to property. Human rights are meaningless, we are a culture where business rights are the be all and end all of morality. By seizing American corporate property to appease Russian interests, the Putin government committed the sins of Castro and Chavez within their respective administrations, and, as Cuba proves, when you anger the sugar companies or Exxon, the US has a LONG memory and no end of sermonizing ability.

We have become the Britain of the American revolution, famous for hypocrisy all over the world, allowing nothing and no one to interfere in the process of making our wealthy wealthier. seeing our own economic system as designed and administered by God and therefore sacred. Since the art of propaganda has come a long way in the past 200 years, we've even managed to convince most of our laboring class of the divine nature of their poverty, and the capitalist class has perfected the subversion of the educational system with the aim of ensuring that no new Jefferson or Franklin or Madison arises to challenge this new sacred Business Empire from within.

In this case, the Post is pretty much in touch with middle America. Most Americans lack the education needed to examine the situation and realize the sheer idiocy of the American position. They no longer have the ability to step outside themselves and realize that their self interests are not the interests of the Divine, that American priorities are not those of God. The Post, honestly or for the sake of circulation, is catering to the mercantile interests that retain control over the government of the US, nothing more nor less than that.

Breathed's Opus of 7/27/08, published by Salon, made this very point.

It's almost impossible to envisage a way out of the government by money mess we've gotten ourselves into, and honestly, to paraphrase Jefferson, I grow anxious when I reflect that God is vigilant and just.