Editorial pages should usually be shielded from charges of bias. After all, that's what the editorial is--an opinion of the paper on a subject.  But they shouldn't be partisans, and they especially shouldn't be partisan all the time.

When an editorial page consistently supports one party or ideology over another, that is cause for complaint if the paper continues to dishonestly claim it is objective and straight down the middle. Sorry, if you always have liberal talking points in your editorial you can't claim your paper is straight-down-the-middle. You can have your opinion, but be honest about what your publication really is.

Unfortunately for us, the nation's paper of record continues to spout timed Democratic talking points day in and day out on its editorial page (an ideology that permeates other pages as well, by the way). It's one thing to criticize a party or both parties for stupid things that parties do, but to do a hit piece that coincides perfectly with cheesy liberal campaign commercials is beyond the pale.

Democrats are attempting to score cheap political points by using Tropical Storm Isaac to conjure up images of Hurricane Katrina and juxtaposing it with GOP plans across-the-board spending cuts that include "disaster relief funding and weather monitoring systems."

William Russell, a guest columnist for the Orlando Sentinal, wrote:

Tampa and the Republican convention seem to have dodged the initial impact of Tropical Storm Isaac. But the full impact of its political spin has yet to be felt.

Issac is building power over the Gulf of Mexico as I write this, and the power of the political spin builds as the storm approaches the landfall areas of Hurricane Katrina. While no one wishes for Isaac to follow the map track of Katrina, those living in its path need to prepare for the wind, rain and storm surges. Those following its political track need to brace for the impact of the political spin to follow the storm. Never a group to let a disaster go to waste, the Obama campaign is waiting to unleash the fury of its spin on the storm with a maximum of political effects.

The spin is par for the course for the Obama Administration, but should be beneath the country's most respected newspaper. Coincidentally timed with anti-Romney political ads paid for by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee and the Republican National Convention, the Old Gray Lady editorialized:

Tropical Storm Isaac is more than just a logistical inconvenience for Republicans gathered in Tampa: it is a powerful reminder both of Republican incompetence in handling Hurricane Katrina seven years ago, and the party's no-less-disastrous plans to further cut emergency-related spending.

David Axelrod couldn't have said it better.

That is not something you will hear Paul Ryan talk about this week at the convention, nor any of the other lawmakers who make simplistic promises about the power of slashing government spending. But the budgets assembled by Mr. Ryan and warmly embraced by Mitt Romney severely cut spending for emergency preparedness, exactly the kind of money needed in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and scores of other states for this and future storms.

They're not even trying to pretend they are partisans at this point. It's bad enough when they pump up one side all the time, but it's even worse when they mislead readers about the other side.

That is $1.8 billion that will not be available for evacuation equipment and supplies, communications gear that lets first responders speak to one another, and training exercises.

The Times said Mr. Ryan wouldn't want to talk about these cuts, but I suspect the Times doesn't want to talk about all the money that FEMA wasted. They dishonestly list all the good things the money was spent on, and conveniently ignore the bad, like all those debit cards that were handed out like candy.

GAO and Homeland Security audits found that up to 900,000 of the 2.5 million applicants who received emergency aid were "based on duplicate or invalid Social Security numbers or false addresses and names", according to MSNBC. That includes the infamous $2,000 debit cards that were used to buy football tickets, lap dances, and expensive hotel rooms.

What's 900,000 times $2,000? Exactly $1.8 billion, the amount Republicans want to cut.

The Times pulls this every day. It's a disgrace.

After Newsweek published a rare cover story criticizing President Obama, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman sprang into action and criticized both the author, Niall Ferguson, and the publication over the story's claim that Obamacare is not deficit neutral.

"We're not talking about ideology or even economic analysis here -- just a plain misrepresentation of the facts, with an august publication letting itself be used to misinform readers. The Times would require an abject correction if something like that slipped through. Will Newsweek?"

Krugman pointed to the CBO analysis that said the Affordable Care Act would reduce the deficit as the final word on the matter. However, the CBO tends to optimistically assume revenue streams that will in reality never materialize. For example, the CBO estimates that $107 billion will be raised from "changes in taxable compensation and penalty payments," which I take to mean the new tax on Cadillac insurance plans. When taxes are calculated, there is a tendency to underestimate human response to increased taxation, which is avoidance. If there are x current Cadillac plans, and the tax rate is y, the government's revenue will be x times y. There, it raised a hundred billion dollars on paper. However, if Cadillac plans are going to get taxed at 30%, guess what--the real life response is that people are going to drop those plans or find some other way to avoid that tax and the government will never see that money.

The CBO can't accurately quantify how people will avoid the tax, but common sense tells us they will. Niall Ferguson apparently understood that, and for his recognition that the CBO estimates aren't the final word on the matter, he was smeared as unethical.

Now, let's put aside that fact that Paul Krugman, the Pulitzer-Prize winning Princeton economics professor, can't understand the concept that taxes affect people's behavior. For the sake of argument, we'll say that the CBO is the final word on the matter and Ferguson is dead wrong.  Should Krugman be the one casting stones about the "misrepresentation of facts with an august publication letting itself be used to misinform readers." Remember, he said the Times "would require an abject correction if something like that slipped through."

Would it?

Krugman's most recent column in the august New York Times seems to show that he himself misleads readers.

In it, he criticizes Paul Ryan's budget as "a con game."  

On the tax side, Mr. Ryan proposes big cuts in tax rates on top income brackets and corporations. He has tried to dodge the normal process in which tax proposals are "scored" by independent auditors, but the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center has done the math, and the revenue loss from these cuts comes to $4.3 trillion over the next decade.

While Krugman assumes rosy revenue projections by ignoring real human responses to tax increases, he also is eager to assume big drops in revenue from tax decreases. It shouldn't take someone like me to teach him something about economics, but when tax rates decrease, economic activity can increase resulting in more tax revenue.  If we thought like Krugman, a business that offers a one-day 20% storewide sale will have 20% less revenue that day than they would have without the sale. To him, a lower price means lower revenues and lower taxes mean lower revenues. To people with common sense, however, lower prices could mean higher revenues, and so can lower taxes.

 But that's beside the point. It's not unethical for Krugman to be wrong about economics, even though that's what he's immersed in.

The unethical part is how he described the "nonpartisan" Tax Policy Center. That group is a joint venture of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institute.

The Urban Institute is a "leading liberal think tank," according to the Los Angeles Times, and Krugman's own employer calls the Brookings Institute "liberal."

Did Krugman lie? Not technically--both groups call themselves nonpartisan, which makes it easier to pretend it's true. But Krugman's standard for Ferguson wasn't that he out-and-out lied, it was that he misled readers. That's exactly what Krugman did when he tried to pass off an ideologically biased group as an objective one during his criticism of Ryan's plan. And he did it in the august New York Times.

So not only is Krugman wrong about economic principles, he unfairly accused Ferguson of being unethical simply for disagreeing with the CBO estimates. Furthermore, Krugman himself really did mislead readers when he tried to cloak a biased group as an objective one in his latest column.

Imagine it--a rabid anti-gay marriage advocate shows up at the office of a progressive advocacy group, denounces homosexuals, and shoots a security guard.

It would be a lead story for days and weeks. Progressives would demand the heads of Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, and other conservative leaders for "inciting" the violence with their "rhetoric."

Now that the opposite has happened--a Chick-Fil-A wielding activist from an LGBT group shot up the Family Research Council for its stance on gay marriage--progressives are forced to show how hypocritical they are.

After all, were they honest, the talking heads on MSNBC, the lefty bloggers, and the Democratic politicians would all have to quit. The people that desperately tried to link Sarah Palin to the Gabby Giffords shooting by claiming that Palin's advice to target her district in the next election amounted to a call to assassinate the congresswoman were very clear that the "heated rhetoric" on the Right was to blame for the violence.

The same people more or less labeled Chick-Fil-A as a hate group after the company's president respectfully said he personally supports traditional marriage. Using the Left's logic, they need to lose their radio and TV shows and should resign their political offices. Especially considering how they painted Chick-Fil-A was light years worse than anything Palin did.

I don't think people's political opinions should be silenced because of what some nutjob may or may not do. But the Left apparently does, but only when it comes to silencing Republicans. This incident just contrasts their hypocritical, sleazy political attempts to shut down the opposition, which borders on fascism, with our side, which promotes freedom of speech, fairness, and decency. 

The mainstream media has curious understanding of fairness as it applies to criticism of the two major political ideologies. If a conservative commits some minor transgression or is even perceived to have done so, he earns a barrage of negative articles. A progressive will only draw criticism if he takes a naked disregard for the truth to absurd heights, and even then, professional journalists tend to blunt the sting of rebuke by pairing him with a conservative so "both sides" get criticized.

So not only do conservatives get quickly punished for small or imagined offenses, they also get punished when the media finally gets around to putting some bombthrower on the Left back into line.

Mitt Romney has to be one of the cleanest candidates ever to run for president. The only facts that President Obama's campaign has been able to dig up is 1) he's rich, 2) he put his dog safely on the roof of a car one time, and 3) back in high school he might have cut someone's hair.

So, they've resorted to smearing Romney with unsubstantiated accusations. Senator Harry Reid, a progressive stalwart, has infamously said on the Senate Floor that Romney didn't pay taxes for ten years.

 That whopper was hard even for the media to ignore. But instead of just taking Reid to task, some outlets strained to draw a moral equivalency between Reid and Romney.

CNN fretted that the presidential campaign just got "even dirtier"--citing, among other things, that Romney said his opponents' accusations are "Obamaloney."

Hypocritical. Contemptible. Dishonest. "Obamaloney." The rhetoric, charges and counter-charges flew fast and thick Tuesday as the presidential election campaign continued on its sharply negative trajectory.

Huh? Somebody lies about you, you say it's baloney, and now you're both to blame for the "sharply negative trajectory" of the campaign?

That's like saying a robbery victim is responsible for creating negative vibes for criticizing his robber.

[Reid's] tactics are part of the big-picture efforts by both sides to frame the election in terms favorable to their man. For Romney, that means portraying Obama as a failed president unworthy of a second term. For Obama, that means depicting the former Massachusetts governor as a champion of the wealthy class and special interests.

See the moral equivalency. "Both sides" are trying "to frame the election in terms favorable to their man." One problem-- Reid is just pulling damaging accusations out of thin air. Yes, Romney is saying Obama is a failed president, but at least there's proof of that!

CNN offered a glimpse into the strategy of Reid's dirty trick:

Reid's unsubstantiated claim, based on an unidentified source, was intended to keep alive the push by Democrats to force Romney to release more of his past tax returns than the two years disclosed so far...

Surely the media would see right through that blatant attempt at manipulation and not echo the call for Romney to release more returns!

The Washington Post editorial board started out good, stating that "Mr. Reid's smear tactics are not unlike those of Joseph McCarthy and deserve equal condemnation."

But, the Post notes, Romney won't release more tax returns. Well, gee, I wonder why--the other side is already lying about him being an evil rich guy. Why give them more ammunition that shows he's got money? Nevertheless, the Post concludes both sides are wrong.

Why is it so hard for these two men to grasp that voters are rightly fed up with sleazy rhetoric and sleight-of-hand campaign finance?

The Ventura County Star also called for Romney to release the tax returns in light of Reid's accusation, which it called, along with Romney's denial "on the friendly confines of Fox", a "fact-free discussion." The returns, the Star editorialized, will only show that Romney is "a very rich guy with great tax lawyers" because he paid "a very attractive rate of 13.9 percent on an income of $21.6 million" in 2010 (the maximum rate he could have paid for that type of income was 15 percent, but all of his charitable contributions helped reduce it to 13.9).

I wonder, since people are so concerned about putting to bed wild rumors by releasing documents, that they will call on President Obama to release his college transcripts. In both cases there are unfounded accusations and an unreleased record that can confirm or disconfirm it.  

But I doubt we'll see that anytime soon.

Actions speak louder than words, and the actions opposing political ideologies have taken during the Chick-Fil-A controversy say a lot about their respective underlying philosophies.

Free-market libertarian-types like me want people to "vote" for companies they support with their dollars. If a company has a good product at a good price and doesn't insult our values, then we'll give them our business. If they have a bad product or its overpriced or their don't have the same values, we'll take it to a company that does.

That's democratic and that's fair. If enough people like the company, it stays in business. If the company alienates too many people, it goes out of business. It's up to the business to succeed or fail. There's no need to get nasty or to manipulate circumstances by applying top-down pressure to make it cave or to put it of business.

Progressives want to destroy the company that disagrees with them--it's not enough to take their business elsewhere. They have to teach the company a lesson; they have to shout it down then shut it down.

The last time there was a on-the-streets manifestation of the opposing ideologies, the Right rallied to wave flags on street corners. The movement from the Left attacked police, smashed windows, and started fires.

In the Chick-Fil-A matter, the COO said he supported the Biblical definition of marriage. The leaders of the company have an opinion about something. And just because they have that opinion, they are the target of an unbelievable amount of hate.

Progressives and gay activists can have their opinion too. But they reveal the totalitarian tendencies that lurk in their hearts at the root of their top-down, big government ideology when they use the force of the state to squelch ideological opponents.

Along with the usual anecdotal nastiness we see from the Left--a professor berating a Chick-Fil-A employee, a bomb threat, and the hate-filled tweets--progressives also instinctively go to the state to solve the problem of people using free speech they don't like. The mayors of Chicago, Pittsburgh, Boston, and San Francisco warned the Christian company not to pursue new franchises in their cities.

Not satisfied that Chick-Fil-A is taking a beating in the press and cities are threatening to ban it, gay activists will resume the offensive on Friday, literally, by trying to offend people with public displays of gay affection in the restaurants.

When people like me disagree with something, we don't organize a boycott. We don't try to outlaw speech. We don't try to shut people up. We just go somewhere else. When my ideological opponents encounter something they don't like, all too often their gut reaction is to destroy it. And they want to do it with the big government they've created--revealing what is really in their hearts.