Page 17 in 2002, Pulitzer in 2005

Brilliant exposé at Riehl World View of the agenda-driven media's handling of the exact same information in the Priest secret-prisons story, three years earlier.

In 2002, 9/11 was still fresh in everyone's mind. And Bush had a 90% approval rating, the highest for any President in the era of modern polling. Such a situation, I would argue, was dangerous to the future of the Democratic Party.

No one likes being at war. And no one likes high gas prices - in fact, look at this graph showing the strong correlation between Bush's approval number and the price of a gallon of gasoline. (And if you really want to get rational about it, look at the price-adjusted cost of gasoline since 1979....)

But I think that you have to be almost willfully blind not to have seen a systematic and concerted, effort to bring that approval number down by a national press only 15% of whom self-report as being conservatives.