OF COURSE NOT. THEY’RE DEMOCRATIC PARTY OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES. Eddie Scarry: Trump Can’t Win The Press.

The mania over James Comey’s firing would carry more weight if the press didn’t behave this way every time President Trump signed an order, wrote a tweet or flushed a toilet.

Political commentators, news organizations and lawmakers on both sides had been calling for Comey’s ousting for months for his bizarre, inconstant approach in conducting the sensitive investigations into Hillary Clinton’s emails and then Trump’s election campaign.

But now that he’s gone, the media act like America just lost its favorite uncle.

Everyone is now used to the simple fact that no matter what he does, Trump cannot win the press. And that’s why no one should look to it for an indication of whether he’s doing anything right.

Depending on what mood the Washington media wake up in on any given day, Trump is either dumb and expected to screw up (i.e. Charles Blow wittily referring to Trump in every column as “president” in quotes) or it’s, Hey, why isn’t he doing everything like a normal president? Constitutional crisis!

Most of them don’t actually seem to know what a “constitutional crisis” is, but then, most of them couldn’t pass a simple quiz on the Constitution.

RIGGED, BY DEMOCRATIC PARTY OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES: Donna Brazile’s debate question flap boosts ‘rigged’ narrative. “’Trump has stressed over and over again that the press is not just biased, but that parts of it have become effectively adjuncts of the Democratic Party,’ said Boston College political science professor Dennis Hale. ‘This certainly feeds that story.’” Ya think? If I were a Bernie fan, I’d be livid.

THINK OF THEM — AND ALL THEIR COLLEAGUES — AS DEMOCRATIC PARTY OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES AND YOU WON’T GO FAR WRONG: No Consequences From Media Peers for Reporters Caught Colluding With Hillary: Colleagues yawn while star reporters like Thrush and Leibovich cooperate with Clinton campaign. Now, anybody engaged in similar cooperation with Trump — or any Republican — would be made a pariah, of course.

THINK OF THEM AS DEMOCRATIC PARTY OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES AND YOU WON’T GO FAR WRONG: Kimberley Strassel: The Press Buries Hillary Clinton’s Sins.

If average voters turned on the TV for five minutes this week, chances are they know that Donald Trump made lewd remarks a decade ago and now stands accused of groping women.

But even if average voters had the TV on 24/7, they still probably haven’t heard the news about Hillary Clinton: That the nation now has proof of pretty much everything she has been accused of.

It comes from hacked emails dumped by WikiLeaks, documents released under the Freedom of Information Act, and accounts from FBI insiders. The media has almost uniformly ignored the flurry of bombshells, preferring to devote its front pages to the Trump story. So let’s review what amounts to a devastating case against a Clinton presidency.

Start with a June 2015 email to Clinton staffers from Erika Rottenberg, the former general counsel of LinkedIn. Ms. Rottenberg wrote that none of the attorneys in her circle of friends “can understand how it was viewed as ok/secure/appropriate to use a private server for secure documents AND why further Hillary took it upon herself to review them and delete documents.” She added: “It smacks of acting above the law and it smacks of the type of thing I’ve either gotten discovery sanctions for, fired people for, etc.”

A few months later, in a September 2015 email, a Clinton confidante fretted that Mrs. Clinton was too bullheaded to acknowledge she’d done wrong. “Everyone wants her to apologize,” wrote Neera Tanden, president of the liberal Center for American Progress. “And she should. Apologies are like her Achilles’ heel.”

Clinton staffers debated how to evade a congressional subpoena of Mrs. Clinton’s emails—three weeks before a technician deleted them. The campaign later employed a focus group to see if it could fool Americans into thinking the email scandal was part of the Benghazi investigation (they are separate) and lay it all off as a Republican plot.

A senior FBI official involved with the Clinton investigation told Fox News this week that the “vast majority” of career agents and prosecutors working the case “felt she should be prosecuted” and that giving her a pass was “a top-down decision.”

The Obama administration—the federal government, supported by tax dollars—was working as an extension of the Clinton campaign. The State Department coordinated with her staff in responding to the email scandal, and the Justice Department kept her team informed about developments in the court case.

Worse, Mrs. Clinton’s State Department, as documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show, took special care of donors to the Clinton Foundation. In a series of 2010 emails, a senior aide to Mrs. Clinton asked a foundation official to let her know which groups offering assistance with the Haitian earthquake relief were “FOB” (Friends of Bill) or “WJC VIPs” (William Jefferson Clinton VIPs). Those who made the cut appear to have been teed up for contracts. Those who weren’t? Routed to a standard government website.

The leaks show that the foundation was indeed the nexus of influence and money. The head of the Clinton Health Access Initiative, Ira Magaziner, suggested in a 2011 email that Bill Clinton call Sheikh Mohammed of Saudi Arabia to thank him for offering the use of a plane. In response, a top Clinton Foundation official wrote: “Unless Sheikh Mo has sent us a $6 million check, this sounds crazy to do.”

The entire progressive apparatus—the Clinton campaign and boosters at the Center for American Progress—appears to view voters as stupid and tiresome, segregated into groups that must either be cajoled into support or demeaned into silence.

Well, yes.

DEMOCRATIC PARTY OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES: Mediaite: From ISIS to Health Care, Hillary’s Media Allies Rewriting History.

OH, THAT STATE-RUN MEDIA:

Just think of the Politico as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and it almost makes sense. (Why would they do this level of paraphrasing when Biden is on video? Well, it’s now less than a week to go before the election, and everybody’s going all in to somehow get Harris over the finish line.)

But Politico doing this when everyone can see the video of Biden’s actual quote? Well:

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:

Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense.

THE CORBYNIZATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CONTINUES APACE: Why Won’t Biden Condemn Anti-Semitic Attacks In America?

Related: Jews Attacked All Over the U.S. – Where is the mainstream media on the anti-Semitic attacks?

Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and their silence makes perfect sense.

Evergreen:

THEY’RE NOT PRECISELY BIASED. THEY’RE POLITICAL OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES:  This Cuomo scandal article shows how easily biased media shapes opinion,

The gynocracy that runs the democratic party want to eliminate him as competition for Commie LaWhorish. So down he must go. And of course, their presstitutes do as told.  (Note that he deserves to be taken down for his mass murders. But the gynocracy considers sexual harassment worse than murdering the elderly. So that’s what he’ll be accused of and taken down for.)

THIS IS CNN: CNN White House correspondent amplifies Democratic disinformation.

Just another day of establishment media types blindly amplifying a contrived left-wing talking point.

It is so weird that this keeps happening!

On Sunday, Democratic operatives pulled a Katie Couric, doctoring an interview of a Republican Senate candidate to make him appear unprepared, ignorant, and easily flummoxed.

Elena Kuhn of the Michigan Democratic Party was among the first to share the altered video, which purports to show Republican Michigan Senate candidate John James awkwardly dodging a question about how he plans to protect Michiganders with preexisting conditions. In real life, however, James gave a lengthy response to the question.

But for some in the press, seeking context is apparently not as important or valuable as the say-so of a Democratic operative.

“Revealing,” said CNN White House correspondent John Harwood as he promoted the 47-second clip shared by Kuhn with his more than 411,000 social media followers. Just a quick reminder: The Republican Party let Harwood moderate a GOP primary debate in 2016.*

* * * * * * * * *

None of these remarks, by the way, are included in the video circulated by Democratic staffers and certain members of the press.

One can dispute the merits of James’s overall response, but it is a straight falsehood to claim he was caught flat-footed by the question and had nothing to say except to assert that he is not a politician. As it turns out, James had quite a lot to say on the topic.

There is no excuse for why people like Harwood would share the doctored video. They can see it originates from Democratic staffers. They know the video gives an incomplete picture of James’s response. They know there is missing context.

They just don’t care.

Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense.

* Flashbacks:

● CNBC Hack John Harwood Is Really, Really Upset That Al-Baghdadi Was Killed.

● NYT/CNBC’S John Harwood Advises Hillary Campaign, Gloats About Provoking Trump At Debate.

● CNBC’s John Harwood Has No Business Moderating A GOP Presidential Debate.

● CNBC Alters Transcript of John Harwood Question About Hillary’s Email.

● “Everyone in the [CNBC] newsroom knows [John Harwood is] extremely far left.”

THINK OF THE PRESS NOT AS BRAVE FIREFIGHTERS, WHICH THEY’RE NOT, BUT AS DEMOCRATIC PARTY OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES, WHICH THEY ARE, AND IT ALL MAKES SENSE: Media silence on voter registration attack deepens our divide.

In the hours and days after Gregory Timm plowed his vehicle into a tent of Republican Party volunteers registering voters in the parking lot of Kernan Village Shopping Center in Jacksonville, Florida, national coverage of the event has been alarmingly lacking.

Local news channel WJXT reported days later on the arrest report, which showed Timm telling the sheriff’s office his “disapproval of Trump” was the motivating factor for the attack. He showed the sheriff’s office a self-recorded video of him driving straight at the volunteers, expressing frustration that the video cut out before “the good part.” Even then, as I write this, the best the New York Times could muster was wire coverage.

No teams of reporters were sent to uncover his dark motivations, upbringing, or political leanings. No psychological profiles have been written up, nor have any experts weighed in on how this is a growing threat. These are all tools that would have been used by an army of reporters if Timm had been a Trump supporter plowing into Democratic Party volunteers registering voters.

The problem isn’t that Timm’s attack on the GOP wasn’t covered by most of the media. It’s that it wasn’t covered with the same voracious appetite news organizations have whenever someone who is even peripherally associated with the Right does something to a Democrat.

This isn’t whataboutism; this is realism. . . . There would have been a week’s worth of cable news coverage, several nationwide protests, and someone calling for a national conversation by now had the victims of Timm’s attack been supporting anyone but Trump.

It’s simply a fact that the journalistic class for the most part sees Republicans as deplorables whose death, silencing, or oppression is largely to be approved of, or at least not made a big deal of. This is why the deplorable class, in turn, regards the press as enemies of the people. Because they’re the people the press is inimical to.

Flashback: Bernie Bro James T. Hodgkinson, Attempted Assassin Of Steve Scalise, Already Being Erased From History.

EVERYTHING SEEMINGLY IS SPINNING OUT OF CONTROL: The Associated Press asks, “The Democratic presidential race started with a record six female candidates, but only one is polling in the top tier. Is it sexism or just politics?”

Why are Democratic Party operatives with social media accounts asking why the Democratic Party is a cesspit of sexism? (Perhaps it’s progress of a sort, since in 2008, Democratic Party operatives with bylines believed that the Democratic Party was a cesspit of racism.)

Classical reference in headline.)

THE MAN WHO BROUGHT YOU THE WAR ON FARTING COWS AND AIRPLANES. The Democratic Party Operatives with Bylines at the Washington Post have a glowing profile of Saikat Chakrabarti, AOC’s chief of staff, and the author of her infamous Green New Deal rollout in February, with a curious, and not at all unexpected admission. Just look for the “unexpected” below.

On a Wednesday morning in late May, emissaries of two of the strongest political voices on climate change convened at a coffee shop a few blocks from the U.S. Capitol. Saikat Chakrabarti, chief of staff to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), was there to meet Sam Ricketts, climate director for Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D), who is running for president almost exclusively on a platform of combating global warming. A newly released plank of Inslee’s climate change agenda had caught the attention of Chakrabarti and his boss, who had tweeted that Inslee’s “climate plan is the most serious + comprehensive one to address our crisis in the 2020 field.” Pleased by the positive reception from the demanding Green New Deal wing of the climate struggle, Ricketts had set up this meeting with Chakrabarti to establish a personal connection and share approaches to climate advocacy.

“Congrats on the rollout,” Chakrabarti told him as they sat down. “That was pretty great.”

“Thank you again for the kudos you guys offered,” said Ricketts. “We wanted to be pace-setting for the field, and I think we’re there now. … I want to ask you for input … in addition to hearing what you guys are working on.”

Chakrabarti had an unexpected disclosure. “The interesting thing about the Green New Deal,” he said, “is it wasn’t originally a climate thing at all.” Ricketts greeted this startling notion with an attentive poker face. “Do you guys think of it as a climate thing?” Chakrabarti continued. “Because we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing.”

As conservative national security commentator John Noonan tweets in response, “One of the central tenets of Climate Change skepticism is that the threat is exaggerated to achieve political ends that are divorced from environmental health. Here’s an outward admission that the issue is used as a stalking horse for ambitious economic restructuring.”

The socialists that Ocasio-Cortez and Chakrabarti play footsie with had some ideas on the subject in the 1920s they may wish to crib from.

Related: Democratic Rep. Wm. Lacy Clay unloads on Ocasio-Cortez, chief of staff for ‘using the race card.’

CLAIRE MCCASKILL AND A #METOO DOUBLE STANDARD?

Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense.

VIRGINIA CLOWN SHOW UPDATE: Democratic Party of Virginia Tells Justin Fairfax They Don’t Want His Money, and His Office Is Fuming.

Meanwhile, CNN’s Brian Stelter “forgets” Gov. Ralph Northam’s infamous January 30th statement during an interview broadcast on Washington DC’s WTOP radio:

When we talk about third trimester abortions, these are done with the consent of the mother, with the consent of the physician. More than one physician, by the way. And its done in case where there may be severe deformities, where there may be a fetus that is non-viable.

So, in this particular example, if a mother is in labor I can tell you exactly what would happen. The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.

Here’s video of Northam uttering those words shortly before his medical school era blackface scandal erupted.

Related: Gaslighting in progress: Ilhan Omar, Bernie, CNN and others are covering for Ralph Northam’s abortion extremism to bash Trump.

Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and their amnesia makes perfect sense. Or as a New York Times headline put it at the start of the month, (with a nice use of the passive tense), ‘‘‘It Just Went Poof’: The Strange Aftermath of Virginia’s Cascade of Political Scandals.”

IT WENT “POOF” BECAUSE IT WAS HURTING DEMOCRATS, AND THE MEDIA ARE BASICALLY DEMOCRATIC PARTY OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES: ‘‘It Just Went Poof’: The Strange Aftermath of Virginia’s Cascade of Political Scandals.

In the space of a week in early February, the public was stunned by revelations about each of the three highest statewide elected officials, all Democrats: the racist photo in the governor’s yearbook; accusations of sexual assault against the lieutenant governor; and the attorney general’s appearance in blackface at a party in college. Protesters and news crews swarmed the Statehouse. Calls for resignations came from fellow Virginia Democrats, Republicans and even 2020 presidential candidates.

And then? “It just went poof,” said Natalie Draper, a librarian sitting in the back of a coffeehouse last week in Richmond. “It’s like it never happened.”

Remember, kids:

DISPATCHES FROM THE MEMORY HOLE: Democratic Virginia Scandals Evaporate from ABC, CBS, NBC.

Flashback: “Jim Geraghty of NRO estimated that in 2006, the Washington Post ran ‘approximately 100 articles, op-eds, [and] editorials’ spotlighting Republican George Allen’s moronic ‘macaca’ gaffe involving his botched effort at calling out a mohawk-wearing video tagger hired by his opponent, Democrat Jim Webb, to stalk the Allen campaign,” and then repeated the same playbook (this time unsuccessfully) three years later when Republican Bob McDonnell ran for the governship of Virginia.

As for the Virginia Democrats’ current racism and #metoo-related scandals being tossed down the memory hole, just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense.

SOCIALIST “IT GIRL” STUMBLES: The future of the Democratic Party has no idea what “occupation of Palestine” means, but certainly likes using it.

That puts Democrats who are rushing to get behind [Alexandria] Ocasio-Cortez in a bind, however. Will the news media start asking them about the “occupation of Palestine” in places like Indiana, West Virginia, and Ohio? Or how about even in New York, where Kirsten Gillibrand practically sprained an ankle attempting to embrace Democratic Socialism after Ocasio-Cortez’ surprise win? Does the Akin Rule apply to anyone else other than Republicans?

Just think of the media as Democratic operatives with bylines, and you’ll know the answer is, “No. Next question?”

YES. NEXT QUESTION? Is ‘identity liberalism’ killing the Democratic party?

Humanities professor Mark Lilla has a new book out titled “The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics”… If you want a sense of how the left is responding to this thesis, you can turn to this contentious interview at Slate. Author Isaac Chotiner seems to be doing his best to undermine Lilla’s argument and, more specifically, to make the case that everything comes down to racism. Lilla’s position is that this assumption is blinding Democrats to seeing a more nuanced view of the problem:

John Sexton of Hot Air goes on to quote a wide swatch of Lilla’s interview, but I want to drill down to this moment, which sums up just how unreceptive Lilla’s intended audience of fellow leftists will be to his message:

[Lilla:] When you ask them about identity issues, the people who are not voting for us, and ask them about what they perceive as political correctness, they respond. You only have to look at polls about this, and it’s a great recruiting tool for the right. Now, unless you assume that all of white America is racist and lost and cannot be saved—

Chotiner: Only about half, yeah.

“So Lilla is saying people on the right are responding to the left’s obvious contempt for them and Chotiner’s reply is to label half of them are racist, which is sort of making Lilla’s point,”  Sexton adds after quoting more of the interview.

Slate is the last journalistic redoubt of the Graham family, who owned the Washington Post and Newsweek for decades, before offloading, in recent years, the latter for $1 and the former in return for Jeff Bezos’ pocket change. One of the reasons why their publications managed to turn a large investment into a smaller one is the smugness of their journalists, one of whom wore a “Yeah, I’m in the Media, Screw You!” button to the GOP’s 1992 convention.

And if anything, the smug cloud over both the DNC and its operatives with bylines has grown much, much larger. As William Voegeli concludes in his review of Lilla’s book at City Journal (titled “Liberals, Shipwrecked,” which is also well worth your time to read in full), “Lilla’s hope for a future liberalism that will forge ahead and surmount identity politics seems naïve.”

And how.

JUST THINK OF THE AP AS DEMOCRAT OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES, AND IT ALL MAKES SENSE:

Hodgkinson also visited the office of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, whose campaign he had worked on as a volunteer, and was in email contact with the two Democratic senators from his home state.

As conservative journalist and video maker John Tabin tweets, “Amazing how a simple switch in party affiliation can turn a headline into a minor detail” that was buried 11 paragraphs into an article astonishingly headlined, “FBI: Gunman who shot congressman had no target in mind.”

JUST THINK OF THEM AS DEMOCRAT OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES, AND IT ALL MAKES SENSE.

Shot:

Back in February, I was riding on the New York to DC shuttle and CNN’s own Jeff Zucker was seated in the row behind me with a woman I took to be a colleague or personal assistant. She was yelling loudly into her phone, loudly enough that the other passengers took note of it, at one point escalating her voice to say: “If they want war with CNN, they got it.” When we landed, I noted the likely inspiration for the call: the administration had offered Mike Pence to every network except for CNN.

—Ben Domenech, “CNN’s War On Trump Is Going Swimmingly,” yesterday.

Chaser:

The media brag that they now more or less run the Democratic agenda. Univision’s Jorge Ramos (whose daughter worked for the Hillary Clinton campaign) recently thundered:

Our position, I think, has to be much more aggressive. And we should not expect the Democrats to do that job. It is our job. If we don’t question the president, if we don’t question his lies, if we don’t do it, who is going to do it? It’s an uncomfortable position.

In other words, Ramos confessed that the Democratic party apparently has neither new ideas nor a political agenda that would win over the public, and thus self-appointed journalistic grandees like him would have to step forward and lead the anti-Trump opposition as they shape the news.

Fellow panelist and CNN’s media correspondent Brian Stelter answered Ramos, “You’re almost saying we’re a stand-in for the Democrats.” Thereby, Stelter inadvertently confirmed Trump White House adviser Steve Bannon’s widely criticized but prescient assertion that the media are in fact “the opposition party” — and should be treated as such.

—Victor Davis Hanson, “Progressive Media & Democrats Form New Anti-Trump Party,” May 30th.

Hangover: Proud Sponsor of President Trump’s Nightly ‘Assassination’ — CNN’s Parent Company Time Warner:

In the next scene the Trumpian Caesar is attacked by the Senators and stabbed to death as an American flag hovers overhead, according to Sheaffer. “They had the full murder scene onstage, and blood was spewing everywhere out of his body.”

Among others, guess who proudly sponsors this nightly wish-fulfillment in the bloody, live and in person! assassination of the President of the United States of America?

Time Warner, the parent company of CNN.

“And keep in mind that this is the same CNN that led the charge to destroy the career of a rodeo clown for the sin of wearing an Obama mask,” John Nolte adds at the Daily Wire.

ANN ALTHOUSE: Robby Mook’s sleight of hand about the Democratic operatives who manufactured violence at Trump rallies. “That doesn’t get the DNC off the hook. Why were these people hired? They did something, and then they were hired. Were they hired because they’d shown what kind of dirty tricks they were capable of?”

Of course they were. The Democrats send people to manufacture violence at Trump rallies, then their operative-with-bylines friends in the media cluck their tongues at how Trump is “manufacturing violence.”

Plus: “Mook sounds so guilty there. He’s mad that any video exists (because it hurts his candidate), and he’s also telling us not to make any inferences about anything that isn’t proved by video. Again, I’m thinking: They did something bad before they were agents of the DNC, so why did the DNC hire them and what did they do?”

Well, he sounds guilty because he is guilty. And he’s angry that the video means that even his allies in the press have to take some notice.

JUST THINK OF THEM AS DEMOCRAT OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES AND YOU WON’T BE FAR WRONG: Leaked emails reveal Politico reporter made ‘agreement’ to send advanced Clinton story to DNC:

An influential reporter at Politico made an apparent “agreement” with the Democratic National Committee to let it review a story about Hillary Clinton’s fundraising machine before it was submitted to his editors, leaked emails published by WikiLeaks on Friday revealed.

Reporter Kenneth Vogel sent an advanced copy of his story to DNC national press secretary Mark Paustenbach in late April.

The email’s subject line read: “per agreement … any thoughts appreciated.”

Flashback: Mark Levin in 2011 on “The Sleaziness of Politico’s Kenneth Vogel.”

FEEL THE BERN: WHY NO PROGRESSIVE INQUISITORS AT THE DEMOCRATIC DEBATE? “I would pay good money to have a moderator up on that stage tonight who would consider it his or her sworn duty to make all the candidates applaud the Occupy movement as modern-day Founding Fathers, call for the confiscation of privately-held guns, explain that abortion should be legal until you can see the baby’s eyes, and whatnot.”

In other words, given CNN’s role as Democratic operatives with bylines and lavalier mics, to ask the question is to answer it.

DEMOCRAT OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES, THEN AND NOW: “Drew Pearson is probably a forgotten name these days* to the young and ambitious racing about the capital. But few had more influence — and played on both sides of the journalist/politics boundary line quite as routinely — as Pearson during decades as one of the two or three most influential political columnists:”

His professional life involved very obvious quid pro quos; doing favors for powerful people by writing about something or, occasionally, not writing about something (like a senator’s tax-avoidance legislation to help a big company in his state).

Writing about a Kennedy press conference, he acknowledges that he’d wanted to assist Kennedy but didn’t get to his press secretary (Pierre Salinger) in time. “I had planned a question about the Free University of Cuba but couldn’t get hold of Salinger to coach Kennedy in advance.”

His was a world of exchanges where information was bartered. While he voted for Democrat Hubert Humphrey in 1968, he still withheld from readers knowledge that Republican candidate Richard Nixon had received psychotherapy. He was looking to get something in return.

He withheld, too, investigating tax breaks that then-Senator Lyndon Johnson had obtained for a Texas company in return for Johnson backing Pearson’s preferred Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Estes Kefauver of Tennessee. Years later, Pearson helped to write Johnson’s 1964 State of the Union address, though their relationship was complex and, yes, he was still a syndicated columnist.

He operated in a pantheon of potent columnists, led by Walter Lippman and Walter Winchell, with no real counterpart these days (perhaps Tom Friedman of The New York Times when it comes to issues of foreign affairs.).

The Friedman comparison is apt, considering the latter man’s pet phrases seem to wind up each year in Obama’s State of the Union addresses, and he’s a frequent golfing partner of our semi-retired president.

* I dunno — he was on the NFL’s All Decade Team of the 1970s…

(H/T: Kathy Shaidle.)