CNN featured William Schneider, Sanjay Gupta and Bill Press. On Fox, Bill O'Reilly defended his use of "baby killer" and "death mill" to describe Dr. Tiller and his clinic. On MSNBC, Keith Olbermann--who the last time I checked in spent a whole segment making fun of Miss Anti-Gay Marriage California's breast implants with waspish misogynist Michael Musto--had only men: Slate's Will Saletan, who thinks we can "end" abortion by stigmatizing women with unwanted pregnancies, because right now everyone is just too kind....

In the more than three decades since Roe v. Wade, "the fetus" gradually became the star of the abortion drama, and the voices of women who had abortions, aka "the woman," leached out of the public discussion. How many embryos can dance on the head of a pin--now that's interesting! Off-the-cuff judgments about how late is too late and what kinds of health problems count as serious--everyone's a doctor!

Noticing that "the murder of Dr. Tiller has gotten more women telling their stories," Pollitt calls that "a crucial, good thing"--but "not so that panels of pundits can approve or disapprove but so that society can hear, firsthand, what girls and women go through." Listen to FAIR's radio show CounterSpin: "Fred Clarkson on Tiller Murder" (6/5/09).

In a week that saw the killing of an off-duty police officer by an another police officer in New York, and the killing of a women’s doctor in Wichita, it's hard to believe that anyone in their right mind would disagree with Sotomayor.

The New York shooter took the victim for a criminal at least in part because the victim was a black man.

Women’s lives are not the same. The assassination of the country's eighth abortion provider brought out of the margins and into the media the reality that women seeking legal care and the people who look after them are still, after decades, subject to the kind of daily harassment, vandalism and threats that no corporate CEO would tolerate for a weekend.

Considering these events, Flanders finds it "hard to believe that anyone in their right mind would argue that to mention difference in America is to be racist--or that to have experienced discrimination might make one smarter about it." In her eyes, big media's "right minds would rather that we pretend we’re all already equal, because then we’ll stop working to make it that way."

Read the FAIR Media Advisory: "Misquoting Sotomayor: Media Let Right-Wing Critics Frame Debate" (6/2/09)

In the good old days of the last century, the years before the collapse of the economy and the World Trade Center towers, political discourse in the U.S. was, too often, rutted in issues that didn't affect the lives of most people. They were important moral and symbolic issues, to be sure. And they were difficult issues, although their subtleties were obscured by extremists, who tended to dominate the debate. Still, the people directly affected by the so-called social issues--abortion, gay marriage, racial preferences--pale in comparison with the tens of millions who have lost their jobs and fortunes in the past year and with the global, life-and-death impact of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

"Didn't affect the lives of most people"? The people who are "directly affected" by abortion, gay marriage and "racial preferences" are women (roughly half of whom experience an unintended pregnancy at least once in their life), people of color and gay people--i.e., just about everyone except straight white males like Klein.

(I'm still trying to figure out what an "extremist" pro-gay position on gay marriage would be. Is that the one where gay rights advocates "want to change the way *I* live"?)

Then Klein writes this:

Late-term abortions--no more than a few percent of the total performed in the U.S.--were Tiller's specialty. These are usually hard cases, sometimes the result of rape or incest or the discovery of severe birth defects. But they are, without question, the taking of a life. At the same time, the pro-life community should concede that sex education and the widespread availability of morning-after pills and condoms are necessary if we're going to prevent these tragedies.

First of all, abortions performed after 19 weeks actually account for only 1.1 percent of all abortions. Viability usually starts around 24 weeks, so what are usually termed "late-term" abortions surely account for well under 1 percent. More importantly, that they are "without question, the taking of a life" is just kinder, gentler baby-killer language. And how are "sex education and the widespread availability of morning-after pills and condoms" going to prevent "the discovery of severe birth defects"?

Finally, Klein launches into an attack on affirmative action:

The Sotomayor debate has been polluted by the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich, who claim, ridiculously, that the judge is a racist. That sort of rant is so-o-o 20th century. Beneath the pollution, however, is a serious policy question that needs to be resolved: With an African-American president and a polychromatic society moving toward racial (if not economic) equity, why do we still need preferences enshrined in law?

Klein's assertion that we're "moving toward racial...equity" is a little hard to figure; the fact that a biracial man was elected president doesn't change the reality for people of color that racial disparities in the United States are still very much with us.

Klein went on to say that Judge Sonia Sotomayor crossed a line

when she agreed in 2008 to toss the results of a promotion exam for the New Haven, Conn., fire department because an insufficient number of minorities passed it. That seems inherently unfair to those who succeeded--including the dyslexic firefighter Frank Ricci, who hired tutors to help him pass and whose name adorns the case. The lack of minority success does not necessarily signify the presence of racial prejudice. The best way to rectify such a situation is to make sure the next test is truer. An appropriate 21st century standard should be proof of actual discrimination against specific individuals.

What, exactly, does he mean by "make sure the next test is truer"? If the test was flawed, the logical thing to do would be to throw out the results. But then, logic doesn't seem to be Klein's strong suit.

"If anything, by enshrining a near-absolute right to abortion in the Constitution, the pro-choice side has ensured that the hard cases are more controversial than they otherwise would be," wrote Douthat, who argued that

One reason there's so much fierce argument about the latest of late-term abortions--Should there be a health exemption? A fetal deformity exemption? How broad should those exemptions be? --is that Americans aren't permitted to debate anything else.

Douthat elaborated on what seemed to be a plan for conciliation: "If abortion were returned to the democratic process, this landscape would change dramatically," because "arguments about whether and how to restrict abortions in the second trimester--as many advanced democracies already do--would replace protests over the scope of third-trimester medical exemptions."

It is true that if you take away constitutional protections, people opposed to those protections will be happier. For instance, those rightists who called for jailing reporters who reported secret aspects of the Bush White House's warrantless wiretapping and black sites programs would probably be happier if the First Amendment were suspended to make such jailing possible. But what about the Constitution? And what about those who lost their protections? One begins to sense that Douthat's plan for reconciliation would only make one side happier.

It's also worth noting that, as much as Douthat may think they are all powerful,  pro-choice advocates are incapable of making concessions regarding the Constitution. Roe was "enshrined " by the U.S. Supreme Court, which will also be in charge of future decisions regarding its disposition.

But just when you thought Douthat's plan might be somewhat was lopsided, he explains how there really is something in it for the pro-choice people:

The result would be laws with more respect for human life, a culture less inflamed by a small number of tragic cases--and a political debate, God willing, unmarred by crimes like George Tiller’s murder.

As Village Voice blogger Roy Edroso summed up the Times columnist's reconciliation plan, “So, see, Douthat gets the end of abortion on demand, and you heathens get killed less often by right-wing nuts; he's meeting you halfway.”

Megan, a blogger at Jezebel.com, put it slightly differently: “To sum up: If we just roll over, accept the end of abortion access and let them teach us about respect for human life, they won't kill any more abortion providers. Good to know whose hands Douthat thinks Tiller's blood is really on.”

On the afternoon of Friday, June 5, Newsweek's website put up an interview with Joe Scarborough, the conservative host of MSNBC's Morning Joe program.  The introduction pointed out that Scarborough had once been the defense attorney for an anti-abortion terrorist who murdered a doctor, and noted that the host had been criticized for giving insufficient attention to the murder of Dr. George Tiller, which occurred less than a week before the interview appeared.

By Friday night, though, the introduction to the interview had been completely rewritten.  Gone was any reference in the lead to abortion shootings, replaced instead by rather bland observations about "the rise of partisan media outlets" and "how conservatives lost their way."  What happened?  Jon Meacham happened, that's what. The Newsweek editor, a frequent guest on Morning Joe, told Gawker he was contacted about the interview by "a member of Scarborough's team," and after looking at the item he decided that "it was better to include that material in the flow of the interview."

Journalists don't usually think it's "better" to make the lead of a story less newsworthy by taking out references to current events.  But then newsworthiness might not be the first thing you think of when you're editing a story about your friend--especially a friend who routinely gives you valuable national TV exposure.  Which is why the better thing to do would have been for Meacham to tell the member of Scarborough's team that he couldn't second-guess the Web editor's decision-making.

When Hannity said he didn't have an association with Turner earlier this year, Turner wrote:

I was quite disappointed when Sean Hannity at first tried to say he didn't know me and then went on to say that I ran some senate campaign in New Jersey. In fact, Sean Hannity does know me and we were quite friendly a number of years ago.

When Hannity took over Bob Grant's spot on 77 WABC in New York City, I was a well-known, regular and welcome caller to his show. Through those calls, Sean and I got to know each other a bit and at some point, I can't remember exactly when, Sean gave me the secret "Guest call-in number" at WABC so that my calls could always get on the air.

Here, for your own consideration, is Crooks and Liars blogger John Amato quoting Turner's language that Connecticut Police Chief Michael J. Fallon deemed "above and beyond the threshold of free speech" for "inciting others through his website to commit acts of violence":

"It is our intent to foment direct action against these individuals personally," the blog stated. "These beastly government officials should be made an example of as a warning to others in government: Obey the Constitution or die."

And, the post continued, "If any state attorney, police department or court thinks they're going to get uppity with us about this; I suspect we have enough bullets to put them down too."

Directly referring to the reason such hate speech is such a hot topic currently, the Hartford Courant reports that "elsewhere on [Turner's] blog, the recent fatal shooting of a Kansas abortion provider is called 'a righteous act.'"