Imagine that in, say, 1982006, Klansmen had hung out at a polling place in Georgia, holding a night stick, and intimidating black voters. And it was caught on video tape. And the Bush administration Justice Department had prosecuted the perps, gotten default convictions, and then basically walked away from the case, giving one of them a slap on the wrist. And it was determined that this was not a legal decision, but a political one, and that some of those responsible had lied under oath to Congress about it, and there was reason to know that the Attorney General was at least aware of it, and perhaps even drove the decision.

Imagine that. Imagine the bays of outrage from the press, demanding Congressional hearings, and to know what the president knew and when he knew it.

Well, that’s sort of what’s happening now. Except, of course, without the Congressional hearings or discussion from the media. Other than Fox News, and PJM, which of course, as the White House said, aren’t legitimate news sources.

Am I the only one who thinks that it’s obvious what Coburn is really asking here?

She as much as said that she will find ObamaCare and the individual mandate constitutional. And, of course, that there are no effective constitutional limits on the power of the federal government.

[Update early afternoon]

Did she just buy herself a filibuster?

“I wouldn’t rule out a filibuster,” [Coburn] said. “Look, my two main concerns are …: We’re in trouble as a nation, and one of the reasons we’re in trouble is the expansion of the federal government into areas that our Founders never thought we should be in. And we have a nominee to the Supreme Court that is fully embracing that and with no limits in terms of the Commerce Clause. So to me, that’s very concerning. The second point I would make, again, is that she believes precedent trumps original intent. And she defended that. And so that — both those things are very concerning — should be very concerning to the American people.”

Jeff Sessions isn’t impressed with her, either:

“She does not have the rigor or clarity of mind that you look for in a justice on the Supreme Court,” Sessions says. “She is personable, people-oriented, and conciliatory, yet she lacks a strict, legal approach. You want a mind on the court. She’s charming, delightful, and personable, but I don’t see that there.”

Sessions is not convinced. “I have become more troubled after today,” he says. “On really tough matters, she becomes very political and acts less in a principled, lawful manner and more in a manipulative, political manner. That’s not what you need on the Supreme Court.”

Unfortunately, it’s what we’re likely to get with this administration.

Some thoughts on conservatives and media bias:

Every now and then, the curtain is pulled back on the mainstream media — and we see how these guys talk and act when they’re at their most authentic. This is important. Liberal media bias is maybe something we all have to live with, but that doesn’t mean it’s something to ignore, be blasé about, or excuse.

I’m grateful to both Walter Cronkite and Barbara Walters for something: They admitted, yes, the media are liberal, and a good thing, too. It has to be that way, they said. For — and this is Walters talking — journalism involves the “human condition,” and liberals care about the human condition. Unlike conservatives, who of course couldn’t give a rat’s a** about the human condition.

Anyway . . . Conservatives should be frank and bold when it comes to the media, as to everything else. And if others say you’re tiresome or whiny or uncool . . . well, so be it. Did you sign up for conservatism to be cool?

Well, I haven’t actually signed up for conservatism, but the bias has been blatant and obvious to me for decades.

Markos’ pollster was defrauding him.

Boo, hoo.

[Update a couple minutes later]

“I hope Kos’ book hasn’t gone to the printer.”

Hey, live by the lies, die by the lies.

[Update a few minutes later]

Geraghty is saying “I told you so.”

[Mid-afternoon update]

Some useful thoughts from Jonah’s readers:

One of the most tasty of several delicious ironies connected with this story is the way the bogus polls seem to damaged closely-contested leftist political campaigns. The nutroots wasted a couple of million dollars, by my count, on races that were probably not winnable.

And this:

Did you look at the cross tabs on that thing? Many of the questions are laugh out loud funny in a tin foil hat sort of way. I loved this one: Should women work outside the home? That’s kooky even by Kos standards. That’s just the thing. The Kos guys dreamed up these question thinking these are the sorts of things right-wing crazies discuss in their secret lair. Can you imagine getting asked this stuff by a pollster? 90% of Americans would hang up after three questions like this.

The R2000 guys may be crooks, but Kos was asking for it. He was willing to pay for “polling data’ that confirmed his only little brand of moonbattery. Now he’s pissed that the polling company was unable to supply it without resorting to deceit.

Well, a fool and his money. But I guess it does show that the left is at least honest in their delusory and fantasized caricatures of conservatives. I often wonder whether they’re liars or just nuts. Now I guess we know.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Why Kos should have suspected something fishy months ago:

1/18/10 Politico – Insider Advantage Brown 52 – Coakley 43
1/18/10 ARG – Brown 52 – Coakley 45
1/18/10 PJM – Brown 52 – Coakley 42
1/18/10 Daily KOS – Brown 48 – Coakley 48
1/17/10 InsideMedford-MRG – Brown 51 – Coakley 41
1/17/10 PPP – Brown 51 – Coakley 46
1/16/10 ARG – Brown 48 – Coakley 45
1/15/10 PJM/CrossTarget – Brown 54 – Coakley 39
1/14/10 Suffolk University – Brown 50 – Coakley 46
1/14/10 R2000 – Brown 41 – Coakley 49

He was paying them to tell him what he wanted to hear.

Last time Andrew Breitbart put up a hundred grand for something, he had no takers, almost certainly because it didn’t exist. I’m referring, of course, to evidence that Tea Partiers used racial epithets at Queen Nancy and John Lewis’ giant-gavel trolling through the crowd on the mall when they passed health-care deform.

But this time, I suspect he’ll bag his quarry, because we know that the Journolist exists. Even if Ezra shut it down, every member of it (or at least many, if they kept them) has an archive. And a hundred Gs is a lot of money. Particularly to reporters in these parlous times for the reporting business:

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.

We want the list of journalists that comprised the 400 members of the “JournoList” and we want the contents of the listserv. Why should Weigel be the only person exposed and humiliated?

Why indeed? And when we see it, we’re also going to have a view inside the creation of the media echo chamber. It will be very interesting to correlate the discussions with the lock-step media narrative of the time.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Breitbart as The Joker:

This is like the Ferry Scene in The Dark Knight.

Heh. Except the criminals in the ferry were much more respectable.

Not really.

Feminism (at last the gender feminism that arose in the seventies) died during the Clinton administration, when Gloria Steinem gave Bill “one free grope,” and the feminists attacked women who were being sexually harassed by the most powerful man in the world, and defended the people who were trashing their reputations, tarring them as “nuts and sluts.” Not to mention when Nina Burleigh offered to given him a blow job, as thanks for maintaining her right to kill her children in the womb.