Case in point: Krissah Thompson of the Washington Post filed a typically lazy, agenda-driven article on protestors interrupting Rick Perry’s visit to New Hampshire today. Being a Post story, it is a high ranking headline on the daily news aggregators such as Google News, so it reaches a decently sized audience.

The story highlights three anti-Perry quotes from apparently unrelated New Hampsherites:

“He’s appealing to the tea party,” said Larry Drake, a retired federal worker and Democrat, who came to the meet-and-greet to show his opposition to Perry. “It’s like George W. Bush on steroids.”

“Did you say Social Security is unconstitutional?” Gail Mitchell, a small-business owner from Barrington, yelled as Perry walked down the sidewalk.

As they chatted, Jamie Contois, who had driven two hours to meet Perry, interrupted politely to ask about his jobs plan that she opposes.

Contois kept the conversation going for nearly 15 minutes, stepping aside when two little girls approached to shake Perry’s hands, then jumping back into the conversation.

“His jobs plan sounds a lot like trickle-down economics,” Contois said. “We’ve seen those policies enforced and they’ve led to a massive crash of the economy.”

Now, you and I know that these mindless rants are not spontaneous reactions to the evil Governor Perry, but rather an organized misison by professional leftists to control the media message early in the Perry candidacy. We also know that any MSM reporter worth their salt would ignore or cover up that these individuals are professional activists, insted naming them ‘small business owners’ or ‘retired federal workers.’ However, since names were provided, I decided to find out just how easy it is to prove that all three individuals are part of the professional left.

It was extremely easy. Ten minutes with Google led to the following facts about our civic-minded protestors:

Larry Drake, a retired federal worker and Democrat

Larry Drake is Chairman of the Portsmouth City Democratic Committee.

He was recently honored by the NH Citzens Alliance (“Over thirty years of working for social, economic, and political justice for all!”) for his career of activism. (The site suggests Mr. Drake may have formerly been a Democratic State Representative).

His Facebook interests include:  Blue Hampshire Blog, Protect NH Families, New Hampshire Democratic Party, Naral Pro-Choice New Hampshire, The Green Alliance, Clean Air-Cool Planet, Union Carpenters of New Hampshire, Draft John Lynch, The Campaign Workshop, Manchester Central Labor Council, Left Leaning Liberal Ladies, Change to Win, Americans Against the Tea Party, I voted or campaigned for Obama in 2008, and I do not regret that decision, NH Job Losses Due to Republican Control, Friends of Bernie Sanders, New Hampshire Alliance for Retired Americans, Elizabeth Warren, Deval Patrick, National Treasury Employees Union, Manchester City Democrats, Rollinsford Democrats, Newmarket NH Democrats, Stop Right to Work in New Hampshire, I’m Voting For Barack Obama In 2012, Derry Democratic Committee, New Hampshire Freedom to Marry, New Hampshire Young Democrats, Farmington NH Democrats, Epping Area Democrats, New Hampshire Committee to Elect House Democrats, NH Sierra Club Chapter, NEA-New Hampshire, State Employees’ Association of New Hampshire, SEIU Local 1984, New Hampshire Students for the Environment, Iron Workers Local 7, Barack Obama, Tim Kaine, Belknap County Democrats, Wolfeboro Democrats, Mid-Rockingham Democrats, Northwood Democrats, Goffstown NH Democrats, Sullivan County Democrats, Carol Shea-Porter, and Rockingham County Democrats (whew).

Well, Ms. Thompson did dutifully report that he was a Democrat.

“Jamie Contois, who had driven two hours to meet Perry… [and] interrupted politely”

Jamie Contois’s current ‘occupation’ is NH State Director of the “Working Families Win” political organization. A hard worker, she holds down several additional ‘jobs’: ‘Volunteer and Co-Founder at Monadnock Live Free and Equal Coalition’, ‘Housing Summit Planning Committee Member at Heading for Home’, and ‘Member at Monadnock Homelessness Coalition’.

Jamie Contois “priority issues” at ‘Working Families Win include Budget Equity, Affordable, Quality Health Care for All, and Workers’ Rights.

No stranger to the protest business, Jamie Contois just a few months ago was pictured assembling busloads of the professional left to demonstrate in Concord against Republican state legislation initiatives.

No wonder Ms. Contois interrupted Gov. Perry so smoothly and politely. She’s a professional interrupter.

Gail Mitchell, a small-business owner from Barrington

Gail Mitchell was a Regional Field Office Organizer for Chris Dodd for President in 2008.

Gail Mitchell is a group organizer for ‘Democracy For America’ in NH’s Rockingham/Strafford county area.

And my favorite: Gail Mitchell, who is quoted in the article ‘yelling’ at Perry about Social Security while he walked down the sidewalk, wrote the following letter to the Concord Monitor in 2009 stating the following about tea party participation in a town meeting by former Rep. Carol Shea-Porter:

[T]he favored tactics of those opposing reform were not reasoned discourse, but rather shouting and yelling to create disruption and draw attention to themselves. The media cooperated by photographing and rushing to interview those who interrupted the meeting. Those who acted appropriately were largely ignored.

It’s like rain on your wedding day…

I don’t mean to malign these activists; they are just exercising (and exercising and exercising) their First Amendment rights to be hippie dumb***es. However, it is absurd for these quotes to go into a supposedly objective newspaper without any mention (and apparently without any research) as to whether they were part of an organized campaign by professional Democratic activists. It’s AstroTurf at its finest, and it just slips over the head of MSM reporters who really believe the whole country is of the same opinion as these fringe lunatics.

So, Ms. Thompson, next time you do a story on some everyday protestors, you may want to check this site. It does all that hard reporting-type work for you.

The Creative Steps Day Camp paid more than $1900 to The Valley Swim Club. The Valley Swim Club is a private club that advertises open membership. But the campers’ first visit to the pool suggested otherwise.

“When the minority children got in the pool all of the Caucasian children immediately exited the pool,” Horace Gibson, parent of a day camp child, wrote in an email. “The pool attendants came and told the black children that they did not allow minorities in the club and needed the children to leave immediately.”

I hate to jump the gun on accusing the club management of racism, but the article doesn’t seem to leave any room for doubt. Their own statement was that “a lot of kids would change the complexion… and the atmosphere of the club.” Not hard to see where they are coming from on the issue.

Look, we all know that hypersensitivity to racism and racial issues has become a drag on our nation and our political discourse. Moreover, modern civil rights lawsuits are frequently meritless ‘shakedown’ efforts rather than genuine efforts to advance the rights of minorities. But the only way to stop the hucksters and end the racial recriminations is to ensure that actual, blatant racism like this is shouted down and, as the law permits, immediately ended by the courts.

I believe the Montgomery County, PA district attorney (Risa Vetri Ferman) and the PA attorney general (Tom Corbett) are both Republicans. I would strongly encourage PA residents to contact them and let them know that Republicans are just as outraged over this conduct as Democrats are sure to be.

We are the party of Lincoln, after all. Let’s act like it.

Despite these shortcomings, Chuck Todd’s ‘First Read’ entry today proves that a blind squirrel can find a nut now and again (even if the squirrel is also mentally challenged, a little on the pudgy side, and has a really goofy goatee):

When she wrote that it’s “honorable for countless others to leave their positions for a higher calling,” Palin might very well have been referring to Obama, who began running for president just after two years into his first U.S. Senate term. But there is one big difference between the two: Obama’s national reputation was pristine from the moment he gave that 2004 convention speech to his presidential announcement, while Palin’s image (after the Bristol-Levi breakup, the feud with David Letterman, and that devastating Vanity Fair piece) is more of mixed bag.

Todd correctly identifies why Palin cannot mount an Obama-like “movement” campaign for the presidency (if that is what she intends). To create the compelling cultural icon that Obama became during the 2008 campaign, you need a completely unsullied blank slate. Palin cannot be that blank slate because she is already defined in the media as incompetent, unintelligent, and uninspiring. (I know this description enrages many readers, but this is the conditioned reaction to Palin for about half of the voters – not only those on the Left but also those uninformed swing voters who get their impressions of candidates through osmosis from the popular culture.)

Not unexpectedly, Todd does not ask the important question, the question RedState readers should immediately be asking themselves: Why did Obama – with his ties to leftist terrorists like Ayers, corrupt thugs like Rezko, and racist radicals like Wright – have a “pristine reputation” in 2006, while Palin – who by comparison is as clean as the driven snow – is irreparably damaged after less than a year on the stage?

We could whine about media bias or moan about the other side’s unfair attacks, but the truth is that we have not had the will or the organization to hit hard and hit early. Barack Obama should have been seen as a laughingstock, a caricature of a corrupt leftist radical, within months of forming his exploratory committee. The Ayers story was known from the beginning of Obama’s career. Rezko was indicted in October 2006. Wright’s racist rants were being sold to the public on his own church’s website. If we had launched attacks daily and relentlessly on each of these fronts from 2006 forward, the media would be forced to cover the story. Sure, the reports would have been written with heavy undertones of “Look what those dirty, racist Republicans are doing now,” but the story would still be written and Obama’s “pristine” reputation would be gone.

I know the above sounds like a sad and fruitless lamentation over one of the many things that went wrong during the 2005-2008 political season. After all, the battle is lost with respect to Obama – if we beat him now, it will be on his record as President and not the old Chicago stories of radicalism and corruption. The battle is probably lost for Palin as well – it is hard to see an event or story with enough impact to undo all of the negative impressions that have been created over the past year. In sum, Obama is president through 2012, we’ve lost a charismatic champion for our side, and there is little or nothing we can do about it now.

However, we have to learn the lesson that this sad story tells. The politics of personal destruction are here to stay, and we do not have cadres of “unbiased” news reporters to do the dirty work for our side. Maligning reputations of public servants may be a cruel and unsavory weapon, but it is a weapon the other side is wielding to deadly effect. Instead of unilaterally disarming and hoping the rules of the game change, I humbly suggest we take Regan’s “peace through strength” approach. In other words, we need to find the future leaders of the Democratic Party and take them down. Today.

This, of course, was old news even before it happened. The so-called “Mexico City policy” (which Obama’s order reversed) has been a political football since 1984. As with any football, the team on offense determines the policy’s direction. Obama’s action was thus a foregone conclusion from the moment Obama won election.

However, even given the utter predictability of this action, I was shocked by the lack of outrage from the right. Did Obama’s team outwit us with the age-old strategy of releasing controversial news on Friday evening? Were we too occupied crafting polemics against an economic stimulus bill to raise our voices on such a core issue to our movement? Or did we just stifle our objections because, well, “elections have consequences”?

Or have we simply started to believe it?

You know what I mean by “it.” You’ve heard it in the monotonous bleating of Beltway pundits discussing the future of the G.O.P. You’ve seen it in the smirk of reporters discussing Sarah Palin’s political prospects. It is the reason that David Frum created NewMajority.com, the reason Christine Whitman created the Republican Leadership Council, and the reason liberals created David Brooks. It is the underlying assumption of a thousand media reports, panel discussions, and strategy memos: “the extreme pro-life agenda is destroying the Republican Party.”

And it is a lie.

The truth is that Americans, according to a poll released by Gallup on Tuesday, oppose Obama’s order by the overwheming margin of 59% to 35%. For reasons of morality, fiscal prudence, or simple common sense, our citizens simply do not want to finance the extermination and disposal of human fetuses in foreign lands. In fact, ordering the funding of overseas abortions was by far the most unpopular action of Obama’s first two weeks – even more unpopular than closing a prison for terrorists.

Now, we need to be honest with ourselves: a large majority of the American “center” identifies itself as pro-choice in any reliable survey. However, we also need to remember that these same centrists have deep moral misgivings about abortion. They favor almost any restriction on abortions short of an outright ban. They clearly oppose using tax money for the practice.

In fact, most American moderates would be unabashed pro-lifers but for two things: (1) they are trained to belief the pro-life view is intolerant and unsophisticated, and (2) as immoral as they believe abortion is, they do not want their sons’ or daughters’ mistakes to be “punished with a baby.” While this is a sad statement about personal responsibility in today’s America, it also tells us we have largely won the public’s minds on this issue. We just haven’t won their hearts.

Tuesday’s poll needs to serve as a stark reminder: contrary to the tired conventional wisdom, we win votes whenever we speak out against Obama’s outright advocacy for abortion.  Americans are not going to reject our party because we insist that foreign aid dollars be spent on programs that are less morally controversial. Vocal opposition to this policy – and repeated legislative attempts to reverse it – is both reasonable and popular.  And it is the right thing to do.

On Monday, Joe Biden’s wife – in an interview with Oprah Winfrey – divulged an interesting little secret: Obama promised Joe Biden an appointment as Secretary of State if he were to turn down the Vice-Presidential nomination.

Scranton Joe hushed his wife with a loud “shh!” immediately after the slip. (Apparently, only Biden men are allowed to make inappropriate verbal gaffes in nationally televised interviews). It was just so darn cute, though, that the audience erupted into laughter. Jill Biden went on to explain that they turned down the SecState job because it would require a lot of travel, and Jill just can’t stand being away from the big lug. At this point, I am guessing that the crowd let out an “awww” that hasn’t been heard since the Olsen twins first strolled out on the set of Full House (and into our hearts). And so, the nation enjoyed yet another endearing and heartwarming moment during the inspirational build-up to the historic inauguration of Saint President Barack Obama.

At least, that is the saccharine spin from the AP. There is, however, an alternative interpretation of this story – one that does not fit quite as well with the mood of excitement and anticipation at the coming Golden Age: Jill Biden inadvertently revealed a serious federal crime by the President-elect, and her husband quickly tried to shut her up before she divulged more details about the criminal act.

As many of you know, 18 U.S.C. &sect 599 sets forth the following election crime:

Whoever, being a candidate, directly or indirectly promises or pledges the appointment, or the use of his influence or support for the appointment of any person to any public or private position or employment, for the purpose of procuring support in his candidacy shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both; and if the violation was willful, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.

This statute is the reason candidates never reveal their key appointments before the election, despite the obvious benefit of naming potential Cabinet members with large constituencies. It is also fairly well-known to the press – whenever one of the “talking heads” suggests that a candidate declare all or part of their cabinet appointments in order to give assurances on some pressing issue, the law will usually be brought up by another pundit as the reason such a strategy cannot be used. In short, both Obama and the AP knew or should have known that promising the State Department to Biden before the election is highly unethical and potentially criminal.

Now, I don’t think this will derail the Obama Express. The statute has not been tested with respect to a President’s Cabinet (presumably because all previous Presidents have been experienced enough to avoid the rookie mistake of explicitly promising Cabinet appointments). Also, the law’s vagueness allows plenty of weasel-room, and Obama’s staff has plenty of weasels to find that room and squeeze Obama through it. However, if the Obama administration even thinks about prosecuting brave servants of our country (including President Bush) for frightening terrorists with cups of water, then they should have no problem appointing a special prosecutor to investigate whether Obama violated federal law by pledging the State Department to a gaffe-prone blowhard so he could win an election.