fed up with Cindy Sheehan

Although Cindy Sheehan's appeal to the liberal media in the United States continues to increase at an amazing rate, apparently not eveyone connected with her is that impressed with her antics. As picked up by The Smoking Gun, Sheehan's husband has filed for divorce. Now Cindy will apparently have more than last year's taxes to worry about.

The timing of the filing seems a bit curious. Since California is a community property state, it is likely that her husband would have an entitlement to any financial gains resulting from the virtual liberal lovefest of Ms. Sheehan. Perhaps some estimate of the future value of Ms. Sheehan's Bush-hating activities can be calculated and factored into the divorce settlement. Sheehan's husband has asked for payments of spousal support which suggests he has at least some idea of the value of her Bush-hating activites which have proven so popular with liberals.

heat stroke??

Cindy Sheehan has become a top draw for the mainstream liberal media, many of whom are downright bored by having to spend a hot August in Crawford Texas with President Bush.

Sheehan meets all the criteria to cement her appeal to the national liberal media (and there aren't that many); she hates George Bush with a passion and she is very outspoken about that fact.

But as Sheehan has started to get the national media attention she craves and as her antics have energized the liberal "hate Bush" media, she has also started to draw attention from conservative bloggers. Last week, it became known that Sheehan's family are not so pleased with her performance in Crawford. Oops.

This weekend, some Sheehan quotes reported by Matt Drudge suggest that Ms. Sheehan may have been adversely affected by the Texas sun. For example, Sheehan's view of terrorism is as unsophisticated as one can get; "You get America out of Iraq and Israel out of Palestine and you'll stop the terrorism" -- pretty simple but pretty naive. Would handing Iraq back to the likes of Saddam Hussein really be a good move and where would all of the millions of Jewish residents of Israel go?

With Sheehan spending her time playing to the national media in Texas, it is possible that she has not had the time for more mundane activities like paying her Federal taxes. With the August 15 deadline for tax filing for individuals requesting the automatic extension upon us, Sheehan has evidently found a convenient excuse to ignore this basic responsibility -- "My son was killed in 2004. I am not paying my taxes for 2004. You killed my son, George Bush, and I don't owe you a penny...you give my son back and I'll pay my taxes. Come after me (for back taxes) and we'll put this war on trial."

So, will the liberal media publish some of this information about their new best buddy? Something tells me the answer is no.

you be the editor

As Editor of a major metropolitan area newspaper, you have the following two stories brought to you for a determination as to which one should be pursued.

Story 1. A radio network headquartered in your city is being investigated for accepting an improper "loan" from a local nonprofit organization whose mission is to help children. It appears that taxes paid by residents of your city could have been used to subsidize this highly-partisan radio operation.

Story 2. The President has nominated a current Federal Appeals Court Judge to sit on the Supreme Court. The individual in question was easily confirmed to his current position only a couple of years ago. Your newspaper has discovered that the Judge's two young children were adopted and the adoption records sealed. A reporter wants to see if these records can be unsealed. There may possibly be embarrassing information in the sealed records.

Most people would certainly select story 1 as it is highly relevant to the newspaper's readers. Story 2 raises a number of ethical questions regarding what level of privacy a public appointee should be permitted to have.

The New York Times had no problem in selecting story 2 as the place to deploy its resources and ignoring story 1 completely. Story 1, it turns out, is about improper financial activities surrounding liberal radio network Air America that had already received a substantial amount of favorable publicity from the Times. Story 2 is about John Roberts and apparently the Times has run into quite a bit of criticism for their attempts to pry into such personal matters.

Is there a liberal bias in the media?