Four decades ago, soon after a president of the United States interfered in an investigation of his actions, a young lawyer named Jamie Gorelick was assigned her first big case. Gorelick, raised in a liberal Long Island household, would defend Richard Nixon as he fought the governments efforts to control his White House papers.

The work was exhilarating. But there she was, an activist for womens rights working for a president she had fought against, a president her friends considered beyond the pale. When Nixon came to her firms office and offered to have his picture taken with the attorneys working on his case, Gorelick made herself scarce.

Four decades later, Gorelick, now one of Washingtons most prominent lawyers, once again represents famous clients who symbolize much of what she and her friends have spent their lives working against. When Gorelick signed up Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump the presidents close advisers, as well as his son-in-law and daughter as clients, she knew her friends might raise their collective eyebrows. She didnt know that some of them would call her a turncoat.

For generations, the premier D.C. lawyer-fixers were lions of the bar, permanent power players in a city where influence can vanish in a moment. Men such as Clark Clifford, A.B. Culvahouse Jr., Edward Bennett Williams, Howard Baker, Lloyd Cutler and Robert Strauss smoothly glided across the great divide, amassing thoroughly bipartisan client rosters.

But now Gorelick, one of the first women to join that elite club of lawyers, finds herself under attack for taking on a share of the Trump familys legal woes. Whether that reflects the cynicism and polarization of the times, or results from the particular antagonism between the Trumps and the city they promised to drain, the reaction has been painful.

In the most public slap, Hilary Rosen, a prominent Democratic strategist and lobbyist, tweeted, Hey Jamie Gorelick, youve just poured that Complicit perfume on yourself, a reference to a Saturday Night Live parody ad that imagined an Ivanka Trump-branded scent. (Rosen declined to elaborate on the tweet, saying only, It is what it is.)

Representing Jared and Ivanka is a case of pushing the ethical envelope, helping a wealthy family on the brink of using the presidency to further enrich themselves, said David Halperin, a speechwriter in the Clinton White House and former counsel to the Senate Intelligence Committee. Gorelick is a Clinton supporter embracing the family that wanted to put Hillary Clinton in jail. People in Washington are all too willing to forgive that.

This being Washington, some of Gorelicks critics tuck their attacks behind the cloak of anonymity. Do you want to be seen as a fixer available to all or a fixer for principles you believe in? said a lawyer who has worked with Gorelick on campaigns since the Clinton and Gore era. One probably pays better than the other, but every step you take has consequences.

In a quintessentially D.C. move, some longtime friends of Gorelick contacted for this article offered complimentary comments about her on the record, and then, after asking if they could make other remarks without attribution, bashed their colleague to smithereens. Those people will not be quoted in this article, by name or anonymously, as one tiny bulwark against outright awfulness.

For the first time, Jamies getting irrational criticism from her fellow liberals, who think that if you represent anyone associated with the other side, you must be a Republican in hiding, said Alan Dershowitz, Gorelicks mentor at Harvard Law School and a friend ever since. Jamie is obviously a liberal Democrat, but this is not a betrayal. Jamie is being patriotic and heroic and consistent with the best traditions of the bar. We have to resist zealotry on both sides.

Ethically, Gorelick has every right to represent Kushner and his wife. The legal profession has celebrated attorneys who take on unpopular clients since the American Revolution. In 1770, when John Adams agreed to defend British soldiers who shot American rebels in the Boston Massacre, he invited a torrent of criticism. As he later wrote, defending the Soldiers procured me Anxiety and Obloquy enough. It was, however, one of the most gallant, generous, manly and disinterested Actions of my whole Life.

At 67, Gorelick, who served as deputy attorney general under President Bill Clinton, commands a breathtaking view of the city from her top-floor corner office at WilmerHale, the Pennsylvania Avenue NW firm where a gentle waterfall in the lobby greets power players whove found themselves in rough currents. She worked on Hillary Clintons campaign, vetting potential Cabinet members, and she was still mourning when she got a call from an old colleague, asking if she might take on the ethical questions about whether and how Kushner and his wife could work for Donald Trumps administration.

The questions seemed most interesting, Gorelick said. Whoever thinks theyre going to opine on the anti-nepotism law? And we are a very consciously bipartisan firm. However, I dont think we had anyone in the firm who was a supporter of Donald Trump.

She now also is advising Kushner as he navigates the media frenzy over the investigations into the Trump campaigns contacts with Russia.

Gorelick, a former head of the D.C. Bar, said she doesnt put my clients through a political litmus test. Indeed, people and businesses in serious trouble gravitate to her like flies to a light bulb. BP hired her after the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster. She represented the Clinton Foundation against conservative gadfly Larry Klayman. The student loan industry brought her in to lobby against the Obama administrations drive to overhaul the business.

Through it all, she has continued her work for liberal causes.

When my clients hired me, they knew who I was, Gorelick said. She has kept Kushner and his wife informed as she continues to handle matters that push back against the Trump administration.

Gorelicks firm charges as much as $1,250 an hour for its top lawyers time, but among the clients she represents for free is Tahirih Justice Center, a nonprofit that serves immigrant women who are fleeing from violence. Gorelick recently worked for Tahirih on a challenge against President Trumps plan to strip local governments of their ability to declare themselves sanctuary cities for illegal immigrants.

I sent the brief to Ivanka and Jared just so they would know, this is what your lawyer is doing, Gorelick said.

Her clients were fine with the division between what Gorelick does in her day job and what she does as a political activist. Some of her friends, not so much. And that, Gorelick said, has been hurtful. Im not an advocate for the Trump administration; I take hard cases. She said representing members of the Trump family will not hinder her from working for the Democratic cause. She even hosted family and friends who came to Washington earlier this year to march against the new president.

The Trump administration has made people unusually uneasy, to say the least, she said.

The controversy surrounding Gorelicks decision comes as Washingtons legal industry still huge but in recent years facing severe financial challenges struggles to adapt to a thin-skinned president with a long history of using the courts to press grudges. As ever, D.C. lawyers are scrambling to make connections with the new administration, but this time, that effort has caused unusual tensions.

Holland & Knight, one of the citys largest firms, lost the head of its media practice group, Charles Tobin, when he jumped last week to another firm after 16 years because, he said, I was told in no uncertain terms that I could not sue this president. As an attorney who represents media clients in conflicts with the government, Tobin said he could no longer work at a firm that wanted to be in a position to help clients do business with the Trump administration and thought that being in an adversarial position with this president would hinder that ability.

Tobin, who will now co-chair the media practice at Ballard Spahr, said Holland & Knight had no such concerns about previous presidents. I sued President Obama, I sued President Bush, I represented journalists against other administrations without any problem, he said.

Paul Kiernan, executive partner at Holland & Knights Washington office, said in a statement that the firm has a long history of representing clients, including media clients, in matters adverse to governmental agencies and officials. ... Contrary to some recent reports, the firm has not adopted a policy limiting our work on specific types of engagements.

Another Washington firm Morgan, Lewis & Bockius lost a client because the firm decided to represent Trump in his effort to comply with government ethics requirements.

Scott Wallace, a trustee of the Wallace Global Fund, a nonprofit that had spent about $400,000 on legal help from Morgan Lewis since 2011, said he terminated the funds relationship with the firm because by helping Trump handle potential conflicts of interest between his family business and his job as president, the firm had legitimized a complete non-solution that empowers and even encourages impeachable offenses.

The law firm declined to comment; a person familiar with Morgan Lewiss relationship with Wallace said the firms attorneys also helped Hillary Clinton vet her potential vice presidential candidates and continue to work for clients opposed to Trump policies.

The criticism of Gorelick is a symptom of the nations sharp political divisions, said Melvyn Fein, a sociologist at Kennesaw State University in Georgia. When you have more polarization in Washington than in a long, long time, the first reaction of many people is to double down, to insist on purity. Everybody gets so concerned about proving how pure they are that they eat their own, he said.

People in politics need both principle and flexibility, Fein said. If youre a hired gun, youre being hired for your skill, not your principles. And thats a reasonable thing in this world, to hire yourself out for your skills. That doesnt preclude having principles.

Most objections to Gorelicks decision are less ethical than political. I know a number of people who have said that anything that helps Trump in any way is heretical to my values, said Ricki Seidman, a veteran of the Clinton White House and a strategic adviser to many Democratic politicians. But I dont think personalizing the polarization has any value. If you look at it just politically, then let [Kushner and Ivanka Trump] sink. But if you care about the country, look at what Mark Warner and others are doing to bring people together. Warner, the Democratic senator from Virginia, has worked closely with Republican Sen. Richard Burr (N.C.) to craft a bipartisan approach for the Senate Intelligence Committees investigation into connections between Russia and the Trump campaign.

Many lawyers, even those who have dedicated their careers to political causes, defend Gorelicks work with Kushner, if only because in legal circles, its gauche to judge lawyers by their clients.

It wouldnt occur to anyone to criticize someone who goes to work on behalf of indigent clients, said Judith Lichtman, a longtime friend of Gorelick and for many years president of the National Partnership for Women and Families. Im the purest girl around, but what I believe is pure is different from what somebody else does. Jamie is holding her principles near and dear, because she is always honest and ethical and she devotes herself not only to her paying clients, but to people who are unserved by the legal profession.

If youre at a mission-driven non-profit, you put your principles front and center, said Marcia Greenberger, co-president of the National Womens Law Center. But in a major private law firm, there are different considerations. Theres a big difference between I wouldnt do that and She shouldnt.

Gorelicks only regret is that the political atmosphere has grown so fractious that the kind of bipartisanship that allows her to represent Kushner and still work on cases involving challenges to the Trump administration is now looked on with suspicion in some quarters.

She recalled her time on the 9/11 Commission, when 10 people appointed from both parties tried to determine why the attacks happened and what went wrong. Determined to come up with a unanimous report, the commission avoided nettlesome language.

We rejected calling what happened a clash of civilizations, Gorelick said. We rejected any notion of a war on Islam. That all came from what I would call the sensible middle. How are you ever going to get that in an environment where people insist on a kind of political purity?

She teared up, reached for a tissue, and, with her voice cracking, she added, It would be a travesty for this country to go down that road. I believe in the facts. I believe in the law. I believe if you follow that system, you will get to a fair result. I dont see that changing. Even now.

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When a liberal power lawyer represents the Trump family, things can ... - Washington Post

If the GOP health care bill passes, even progressive states could be forced into rolling back protections for preexisting conditions.

Patrick CaldwellJun. 12, 2017 6:00 AM

A Save Obamacare rally in Los Angeles, California on March 23, 2017.Ronen Tivony/ZUMA

When House Republicans passed a controversial health care bill that would allow states to opt out of Obamacares protections for people with preexisting conditions, some GOP lawmakers sought to assure voters that few states would actually take them up on the offer. Its very unlikely that any governor of any state will remove the preexisting conditions clause, Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), a member of the House leadership team, told NPR. Thoseprotections, after all, areone of the most popular partsof the 2010 health care law;70 percent of Americans oppose the idea of letting states do away with them.

But in interviews withMother Jones, health care experts warn that Cole is wrong: If the GOP bill becomes law, many states will indeed eliminate preexisting-condition protections and/or at least some of Obamacares requirements that insurance planscovera range of standard treatments, including maternity care and mental health. And it wouldnt just be states that voted for President Donald Trump. Under the GOP bill, evenprogressive statesmight have to take drastic measures to prevent theirhealth insurance markets from exploding.

In order to win over hardcore conservatives in the House, Republican leadersadded an amendment to their Obamacare repeal legislationthat could have dramatic consequences. The amendment would allow any state to rewrite Obamacares essential health benefits. States could also end community rating, the requirement that insurance companies charge the same premiums in a given area without discriminating against folks with preexisting conditions. If a state waived community rating, insurance companies would still be required to sell insurance policies to sick people, but the insurers could charge whatever price theywanted.The likely result: Insurance would simply become unaffordable for people with expensive medical conditions.

Experts say stateswould likely face enormous pressure to adopt at least some of the waiver options. In part, that wouldarise from insurance companylobbying;the industry spent tens of millions lobbying at the federal level in 2016 alone.But the basic market dynamics created by the GOPbill would play a role as well,potentially creating an industrydeath spiral if states refuse to allow price discrimination based on health conditions. Insurers would be putting pressure on states, saying, We cant operate in this market. We wont participate at all unless you start rolling back these protections,' says says Edwin Park, vice president for health policy at the liberal-leaningCenter on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Insurance companies would face an immediate crunch if the Republican bill became law. The legislationends Obamacares individual mandate this year, removing a majorincentive for healthy people to buy insurance. The bill also reduces the amount of money the government offers in subsidies to help lower-income people pay their premiums. With less help fromthe government, healthy people would have even more reason not to buyinsurance.

Before Obamacare, state insurance markets were lightly regulated, with 47 states and the District of Columbia allowing insurers to charge sicker people higherrates. The reason was simple: Unless you compelled healthy people to buy insurance and spent money to help them afford their premiums, there was no way to make premiums affordable while also charging everyone the same rate. The GOPbill would make the math even more daunting, since it would repeal Obamacares individual mandatewhile still requiring companiesto sell insuranceto anyone who wants it.If insurers cant charge sick people more under the scenario, they will likely end up charging everyone more, which, in turn, would drive even more healthy people out of the market. That would drive premiums even higher, causing the market to become unsustainable.

Most carrierslooking at a market where you have to take all comers, and theres no mandate and theres much smaller subsidiesmost carriers are going to look at that bargain and say this is not a viable market for us unless the state takes up this waiver option, says Sabrina Corlette, a professor at Georgetown Universitys Health Policy Institute.

While insurance companies arent fans of many of the Republicans other proposed changes, the waiver options are the sort of policy that the industry has generally been asking for, notes Linda Blumberg,a senior fellow in the Health Policy Center at the Urban Institute. They wanted fewer requirements on benefits. They wanted to design and tailor benefits to particular consumers as they did before. And they wanted to be able to do medical underwriting, Blumberg says. So these waivers would be popular with the core, the mass of the industry. Its how they did business before. Its how they see that they can keep their costs down.

So far, no governors haverushed forward to say theyd eagerly ditch preexisting-condition protections. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) briefly suggested he would take a look at the waiver options, but he immediately walked that back as a backlash began to brew. But even the governors currently saying they would never touch preexisting conditions might find themselves ina different position a few years down the line when insurance companies threaten to leave the state unless lawmakers change the rules and weaken regulations.

Its a Hobbesian bargain, Corlette explains. Either you are faced with major carriers leaving the market entirelywhich means that both healthy and sick people would lose coverageor taking up these waivers that would almost certainly mean that sicker people lose access to coverage. I think many state-level policymakers will look at that bargain and say, Well, I want at least some people to get coverage, and so well take up these waivers and give insurers some ability to protect themselves against the highest of high-cost enrollees.'

And it wont just be the insurance companies asking for these changes. Aspremiums rise, healthy people could also prove to be a powerful lobbying bloc. At any particular moment in time you have more healthy people living in your state than sick people, thats just the way of the world, Blumberg says. The shear numbers disparity could sway lawmakers otherwise inclined to helppeople with preexisting conditions. When youve got the bigger chunk of your population agitating in one direction because affordability has decreased, and youve got insurers moving in the same direction to reduce their risk and be able to sell more policies to more people, its a pretty powerful combined force, Blumberg says.

When the Congressional Budget Office analyzed the GOPs bill last month, it estimated that half of Americanswould live in states that adopted a waiver to tinker with the definition of essential benefits. An additional one-sixth of the country would live in states that changed the preexisting-condition ban. The CBO projects that premiums across the country would at first rise much higher under the GOP bill than under current law20 percent higher in 2018, and then 5 percent higher in 2019. That trend would change as states begin implementing the waivers. Starting in 2020average premiums would depend in part on any waivers granted to states and on how those waivers were implemented and in part on what share of the funding available from the Patient and State Stability Fund was applied to premium reduction, the CBOs stated.

But the CBO only looked at the first decade of the laws existence. Every health expert Mother Jones contacted noted that the pressures on state markets will only grow as time goes by. The problem will become especially acute starting in 2026, when the state stability funda pot of money the bill would provide tostates to addressvarious problemstotally dries up.

You wouldnt see all these progressive states going after a waiver in year one, but within a couple of years after that I think you would, Blumberg says. The tension and frustration of consumers would start emerging quite quickly, so changes might happen in a year, or it might take a couple of years. But then youre really in a situation that is not going to make anybody happy.

Mother Jones is a nonprofit, and stories like this are made possible by readers like you. Donate or subscribe to help fund independent journalism.

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Think Your Liberal Governor Will Protect You From Trumpcare? You're Wrong. - Mother Jones

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Two days ago I ordered for my living room a framed portrait of His Holiness Pope Francis, Bishop of Rome, Sovereign of Vatican City, and 226th Supreme Pontiff of the Catholic Church. It is evidence of what strange times we are living in that my decision to hang the pope's picture, once a staple of dining rooms and parlors the world round, will be regarded by many of my fellow Catholics as a regrettable home dcor move at best.

I am not one of those ultramontantist Catholics who pretend that every word that falls from the papal lips is a piece of heaven-sent wisdom to be cherished, but I do believe that the pope is Christ's Vicar on Earth and that he deserves our affection every bit as much as he demands our obedience. We call him by the familiar title of "Papa" because he is our spiritual father; dumping on your father in public is not a good look.

This is not to say that I am not concerned about the well-being of the Church under Francis. So far from feeling sanguine, I believe that the Church is more than half a century into her worst climacteric since the Reformation, a period of doctrinal chaos and pastoral uncertainty comparable to the Arian crisis of the fourth century. I also maintain that this crisis is the direct result of the promulgation of the Novus Ordo Mass, which I hope to see disappear in my lifetime and replaced with the old Roman Rite of St. Pius V in its ancient fullness. I am not, in other words, a happy-clappy liberal Catholic.

But neither is Pope Francis.

Indeed, I would go so far as to say that both of his predecessors, St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI, had more of the saccharine "Spirit of Vatican II" about them than Francis has. The current pope is a hard-headed practical man, with no illusions about human nature. Nor is he much of an intellectual, though his environmental encyclical Laudato si' is one of the most important pieces of theological writing to have appeared in my lifetime.

His is a decidedly peasant spirituality of intense Marian devotion. He loathes pomposity with the fervor of his ascetic namesake, St. Francis of Assisi. While he is famous for not getting on well with mainstream traditionalists like me, the so-called rigorists and doctors of the law whom he has subjected to endless (and sometimes deserved) ridicule, he clearly has a soft spot for the much-maligned Society of St. Pius X, whose founder was shamefully and perhaps invalidly excommunicated by John Paul II. His gradual reintroduction of these battered and pious misfits into the wider life of the Church is the answer to many prayers.

Much of the opposition to Francis is ostensibly a response to another of his missions of mercy, namely his streamlining of the annulment process, and what some consider his loosey-goosey views about admitting Catholics who have been civilly divorced and remarried to Holy Communion. I agree that in the hands of unscrupulous bishops in Europe and parts of the United States Francis's earnest entreaties for pastoral understanding of difficult situations could be used to justify sacrilege. But I am also realistic. Outside the neoconservative diocesan enclave of Northern Virginia where many of the pope's American critics live, the reality on the ground in many parishes in this country already resembles their fever dreams. At the parish in rural Michigan where my family attended Mass when I was in middle school, the lector most Sundays was a divorced and remarried Freemason. No one attended confession. Virtually everyone receiving the sacraments did so illicitly, with the full encouragement of the pastor. The worst has already come to pass, yet the Church somehow survives, just as Our Lord promised St. Peter it would.

These concerns about sacramental discipline would also be more credible if they were not accompanied by a frenetic, omnidirectional antipathy to Francis the man. Ostensibly traditionalist Catholic journalists subject the pope's every utterance to a kind of graspingly paranoid scrutiny; the most innocuous line from a homily is taken as evidence of a sinister mission to undermine and ultimately destroy the Church. Meanwhile, an eager chorus of anonymous whisperers echo their delusional claims and flatter them for their keen faculties of observation.

Far and away the worst piece of Francis baiting I have encountered so far is The Political Pope: How Pope Francis Is Delighting the Liberal Left and Abandoning Conservatives, a new book by an American journalist called George Neumayr. Crude, feverish, vague, poorly written, full of tabloid speculation, and hysterical prejudices with no basis in Catholic doctrine, this thinly sourced fire-breathing manifesto is, not to put too fine a point on it, one of the most absurd books I have ever read. Set aside for a moment the ludicrous conceit of treating the affairs of the Church in the crudely reductive categories of American politics as interpreted by talk radio (is Tim Kaine really "the left"?); the whole idea of a layman writing a book-length attack on the pope is ridiculous on its face, no matter how subtle its method. What could be more loathsome in the mouth of a Catholic than to repeat slanders of His Holiness made by Rush Limbaugh, a four-times-married childless serial philanderer who believes abortion is a states-rights issue?

The painful but delicious truth is that it is Neumayr and his followers who must answer to the charge of liberalism. It is they who believe that the clichs of the Republican Party have a higher claim on their consciences than the words of popes and bishops and that the hideous sorcery of neoliberal economists invalidates the Church's immortal teachings about usury, the just wage, the maintenance of the poor, and our duties to be prudent stewards of God's creation. That old saw about the mote in thine own eye has never been more appropriate.

The rest is here:

Pope Francis is not a liberal - The Week Magazine

A A

Leonard Pitts Jr.

Heres a good rule of thumb for aspiring comics. Whenever you are compelled to say, Hey, it was a joke, it probably wasnt. At the very least, it didnt land like one.

Bill Maher is an accomplished comic, not an aspiring one, but he deftly illustrated that rule recently on his HBO show, Real Time with Bill Maher.

As youve surely heard, Maher was interviewing Republican Sen. Ben Sasse, who invited him to come to Nebraska and work in the fields with us. Mahers riposte? Work in the fields? Senator, Im a house n-r.

Some people including Sasse laughed. Some groaned. Its a joke, said Maher with a dismissive wave of his hand.

A day later, he issued a statement proclaiming himself very sorry.

Which is well and good, but it doesnt answer the most vital question: Where did he get the idea that word was OK for him to say?

Yes, he has a constitutionally protected right to do so; thats not at issue.

One simply wonders where he got the notion he could get away with it. Maybe its the same place he got the notion he could get away with calling Sarah Palin a ct back in 2011?

Maher, of course, is just the latest high-profile comedic fail. Kathy Griffin is still smarting from the beating she took for a jarringly offensive picture of her holding up a prop meant to look like the bloody, severed head of Donald Trump.

But ugly as that joke was, it is of a different kind than Mahers transgression.

What he did is more of a piece with Stephen Colberts homophobic quip about Trumps mouth and Vladimir Putins man parts. Or his old Ching Chong Ding Dong routine, which offended many Asian Americans.

It calls to mind Seth MacFarlanes sexist We Saw Your Boobs song at the 2013 Oscars, which appalled many women. And Daniel Toshs 2012 joke about an audience member being raped.

We are not here to argue whether those men are or are not racist, sexist or homophobic. Thats immaterial.

No, we are here to deconstruct the sense of privileged, white, male, liberal entitlement that allows them to feel they can say and do such things in the first place.

Yes, humor is rude, comedy is shock and funny is whatever works on a given night.

Yes, satire is the art of undermining an asinine belief or behavior by magnifying or pretending to agree with it.

Yes, the business of laughter is the business of crossing that completely subjective, always moving line of decorum and propriety.

And yes, occasional failure is inevitable.

Ask Kathy Griffin.

But with all that duly conceded, imagine for a moment it was Rush Limbaugh who made Bill Mahers joke or Sean Hannity who sang Seth MacFarlanes song. The right wing is known for its hostility toward African-Americans and women, so the outrage would have been visceral, immediate and loud.

Many of us would have rightly decried jokes that bully and demean marginalized peoples.

Yet that fury feels muted or altogether absent when such jokes are told by the left-leaning likes of MacFarlane and Maher.

Lacking the right wings baggage of racial and gender hostility, they escape or expect to escape relatively unscathed.

But why? Because theyre on our side? Because theyre just joking?

Those of us who are marginalized and those who simply care may want to rethink that blank check forbearance, given that a smarmy white comic feels free to declare himself a house n-r.

If your ancestry traces to slavery, you might well ask: Is this guy laughing with us or at us? And thats the problem.

These days, its hard to tell.

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Pitts: Why would a privileged, white, liberal male say that? - The Columbian

Credit: Paste Magazine

By Bill Adams

Mainstream news media has long been accused of having a liberal bias. Some studies have supported this belief. Liberal bias may be inherent in news journalism for reasons that arent flattering to conservatives.

Defining Liberal and Conservative.While political views are neither immutable nor binary, certain characteristics have remained relatively consistent. Broadly speaking, liberal policies support labor, equality and a strong social safety net, strong public institutions, progressive taxation, diplomacy and the avoidance of military conflict, and protection of the environment.

Conservatives emphasize protection of business interests, military strength, lower and flatter taxation, deregulation of the economy, and privatism. Even more generally, conservatives tend to emphasize trickle-down or supply-side economics and liberals in trickle-up or demand-side (or Keynesian) economics. Conservatism, in its definition, is conservation of the status quo. It tends toward preserving the existing economic and social hierarchy.

In contrast, the first definition of liberal in the Oxford Living Dictionary, means [w]illing to respect or accept behaviour or opinions different from ones own; open to new ideas. Liberalism is often focused on change to gain parity and rights for those who are disadvantaged by the existing hierarchy.

To begin with, Journalism particularly investigative or news journalism is the investigation, understanding, and dissemination of facts and information via news media. The First Amendment ensuring freedom of the press was intended to act as a check on power and was uniquely made to empower the general public.

Similarly, the definition of liberal, with its emphasis on respecting different opinions and being open to new ideas is essentially what freedom of the press is all about; and what makes freedom of the press a threat to conserving the entrenched powers. Thus, to the extent that liberal has generally aligned with equality and speaking truth to power, journalism is an inherently a liberal endeavor.

A Washington Post opinion piece supported the conclusion that more journalists tend to lean to the left politically than to the right, quoting retired Indiana University journalism professor David H. Weaver. (For a countervailing journalist tendency, see false balance.) The piece ventured several theories for liberal bias, ranging from the source of new journalist hiring (liberal Northeastern colleges) to the location of major media outlets in liberal cities. Most of these reasons could be categorized as extrinsic causes and assume that but for these influences, journalism would appear more politically neutral.

However, the article missed perhaps the most obvious and significant reason for journalisms appearance of liberal bias. Unlike the reasons ventured in the article, which likely have some merit, the most significant reason is intrinsic to journalism. The reason itself sounds biased: Good journalism and liberal/progressive values align more closely than do good journalism and conservative values. Good journalism is intrinsically a liberal endeavor.

The broad definition of journalism simply means the occupation of reporting, writing, editing, photographing, or broadcasting news or of conducting any news organization as a business. This definition includes tabloid journalism as well as truth or fact-based journalism.

However, with the evolution of news journalism, the profession came to adopt various codes of ethics. Wikipedia notes that these codes tend to have the following principles in common: truthfulness, accuracy, objectivity, impartiality, fairness, and public accountability. Thus, the term good journalism is shorthand for journalism guided by journalistic ethics.

More in-depth understanding of issues inevitably leads to more nuanced and complex views, or views that challenge the status quo and conventional wisdom. More often than not, a fuller understanding of an issue will tend to align with liberal values. Consider the following categories:

Profiles of individuals or groups of people: A fuller understanding of a person or group, particularly those who are undergoing great difficulty, will typically result in some level of compassion. Additionally, compassion can temper or replace previously held prejudice or resentment. Thus, good journalism, to the extent it evokes compassion and challenges conventional prejudices through greater understanding will appear to have a liberal bias.

Environment: Scientific data consistently supports the need to preserve and restore the environment. Environmental conservation has consistently been more a liberal cause than a conservative one. Thus, fact-based journalism on this topic will appear to have a liberal bias.

Business and the Economy: While conservatives tend to think of themselves as economic pragmatists, the economy tends to be a much more neutral proposition. The arguments for Keynesian economic policies and Friedman or Supply-side economics dont favor conservatives. Moreover, supply-side economic policies have a poor track record for balancing the national debt or balancing the budget. Regulations are another common target of conservatives. However, any serious discussion will acknowledge that regulations are also important to sustaining the economy, protecting competition, and preventing financial disasters. Thus, good journalism in topics of business and the economy should appear relatively neutral.

Sports: Perhaps the only topic in which reporting is generally deemed apolitical.

International Affairs and Conflict: Nationalism is a substantial part of most military conflicts. Nationalism, aka patriotism, most often comes from the conservative wing. At the same time, passivism has not proven to be a good defense against the military aggressions of other countries. Thus, journalism in this topic should appear relatively neutral. Nevertheless, decisions to engage in military conflict often involve behind the scene agendas that run contrary to the popular narrative. Additionally, the carnage and human toll of war undermine patriotic narratives of heroism and purity of purpose. These topics are central to reporting on military conflicts, and thus give the appearance of liberal bias.

Generally speaking, the liberal mainstream media has not had a liberal agenda dictated from its ownership or management more often the contrary has been true. This circumstance has changed somewhat as media outlets have attempted to emulate the success of Fox News by repositioning themselves as its liberal equivalent, e.g., MSNBC.

However, for the most part, mainstream media has attempted to adhere to journalistic ethics of objectivity, neutrality, and seeking truth. Reporting has been influenced by public opinion and the topics of interest of the period. For example, in the 1980s when media often focused on topics that remain at the core of conservative beliefs excess government spending (remember the $600 dollar toilet seats) or welfare cheats they were still accused of having a liberal bias.

However, the perceived liberal bias emanates as much from the nature of journalism as anything else. At the time, those stories were as much about speaking truth to power, and thus liberal, as current reporting is about Trumps excesses.

Thus, media entities which concern themselves with journalistic ethics, objectivity, and the pursuit of truth, will always appear to have a liberal bias.

If good journalism is inherently liberal, what is conservative journalism? This is not meant to be a rhetorical question because conservative journalism is not necessarily bad journalism. It can be sincere and high-level journalism, as in the case of the National Review or the Weekly Standard. Its just not investigative or news journalism. Its opinion and analysis. In these latter two publications, its not meant to be objective reporting any more than is Mother Jones or The Nation.

In almost all major conservative media outlets, the bias comes from on-high in the organization. All conservative bias in media is dictated from the top down. Objectivity is not part of the program.

Such media outlets come in different forms. There are the aforementioned conservative intellectual publications, which focus on opinion and analysis. Then there are populist and tabloid publications. The Murdoch (21st Century Fox and News Corp.) publications like Fox News and Wall Street Journal are particularly interesting. They pretend to be objective but adhere to a strict top-down conservative agenda. The opinion and commentary sections are obvious.

Less obvious is the news reporting, in which the bias is accomplished by filtering news that is reported so that it supports the conservative agenda. Fox is famous for its laughably false claim to be fair and balanced. The Wall Street Journal recently encountered internal dissension when management sought to influence the way its staff reported on Trump.

Fox News, in particular, has been extremely successful and profitable. It applies many of the strategies Rupert Murdoch learned in his Australian and British tabloid publications, The Daily Telegraph and The Sun. Murdoch, and his former Fox CEO Roger Ailes, recognized that these strategies could be successfully combined with a populist brand of conservatism by provoking white resentment and fears.

Thus, unlike the Weekly Standard and the National Review, Fox News seems less concerned with serving an ideology than with exploiting it for profit. The country and even the Republican Partys agenda have paid dearly for Murdochs exploitation of populist conservatism.

As for publications like Breitbart or radio commentators like Rush Limbaugh or Alex Jones: no reasonable person goes to these outlets for news. They are ideological rallying sources.

Thus, in that conservative journalism intentionally as part of its program discards the journalistic ethical canons of objectivity and unvarnished truth, it is not journalism as we have come to expect from real news outlets.

Freedom of the press is a liberal value. It preserves the right to speak truth to power. It is the common citizens check on the powerful. Conservatives endeavor mightily to reframe their cause as that of the common citizen against the elites. But that unnatural distortion is never sustainable.

The current alliance of Republican billionaires and the white working class attacks educators and subject matter experts (elites), people of color, and immigrants; and thus is still an alliance of the more privileged against the less privileged. In the end analysis, conservatives always support the existing privileged class; and it is the purpose of the First Amendment to check abuses of power by that class.

In the current political climate, populist conservatism is open in its disdain for academics and scientists as intellectual elites, and racial and cultural sensitivity as political correctness, and compassion as bleeding heart liberalism. Thus, now more than ever, good journalism journalism that seeks truth and evokes understanding, tolerance, and compassion is inherently liberal.

Bill Adams is the founder and chief editor of UrbDeZine. He is also a partner in the San Diego law firm of Norton, Moore, & Adams, LLP. He has been involved with land use and urban renewal for nearly 25 years, both as a professional and as a personal passion. He currently sits on the Boards of San Diego Historic Streetcars, The San Diego Architectural Foundation, The Food and Beverage Association of San Diego County, andThe Gaslamp Quarter Association Land Use Planning Committee.

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Why Good Journalism is Liberal - San Diego Free Press

The provincial New Democratic Party has filed a complaint with both the Winnipeg Police Service and Elections Manitoba, allegingthe Liberals are behind the disappearance of hundreds of campaign signs.

In a letter to elections commissioner Bill Bowles, NDP secretary Keith Bellamywrote about BernadetteSmith's campaign officegetting a complaint from a constituent about his sign being stolen.

Osvaldo Pena told CBC he saw three people near his house taking an NDP sign he had perched on his front lawn Thursday evening.

He said he was driving with his grandson around 8:30 p.m. when he noticed three men standing on a sidewalk in front of his house. Pena said the men had about eight or nine NDP signs in their hands, so he decided to confront them.

"I told them I need it back." He said that's when the men told him he'd have to buy his sign if he wanted it back.

"I said what do you mean, that's mine. He said well, there's a place where they pay $2 for the small one and $5 for the big one. And Isaid yeah, but that one is mine!"

Pena said he then reported the incident to NDP campaign headquarters who then sent a staffer out to search for the men.

He said they found the men and one said he was getting paid to take the signs to 275 Selkirk Avenue. The Liberal Party's campaign office for Point Douglas is located at 271 Selkirk Avenue.

NDP secretary Keith Bellamy says the Bernadette Smith campaign has lost 'an extraordinary' number of signs. (CBC News)

In the NDP's letter to the elections commissioner, Bellamy wrote "Our campaign staff member approached the individual and the attached link to video was filmed during that conversation. In the video, the individual in question said that he is receiving $5 for every large sign and $2 for every small sign that he delivers to 271 Selkirk Ave., the address of the Liberal Party campaign office for Point Douglas."

Bellamy estimates the Smith campaign has lost as many 450 signs at a cost of approximately $6,000.

Liberal Party presidentPaul Braultissued a statement about the allegations Sunday night, saying "The Manitoba Liberal Party does not condone the theft of campaign signs and we have not engaged in this activity."

The Manitoba Liberal Party denied the allegations. (CBC News)

"We believe this allegation is [a] last ditch attempt by the NDP to sway voters that they have lost. This allegation isis precisely the kind of behaviour that we are working hard to change. Every day we hear how much people in this area want change and this is an example of the type of politics that the people of Point Douglas have grown weary of," the statement said.

Brault said as of Sunday evening, the party hadnot received official notification from the Manitoba commissioner of elections about a complaint. He encouraged anyone who witnesses the theft of any campaign materials to contact police.

The NDP say they've lost nearly $6,000 in campaigns signs in Point Douglas election. (CBC News)

A spokesperson for PC candidate JodiMoskalacknowledges her campaign has lost signs, but not in the numbers the NDP are alleging.

"The PC campaign in Point Douglas has received a record number of sign requests during the byelection and we have had to replace approximately 100 of those signs due to theft or vandalism. Theft of election signs is illegal, and goes against the spirit of a free and fair election process. We condemn any individual or group who partakes in that type of activity," said a Moskal campaign spokesperson.

Bellamy said the signs' disappearance has hurt the NDP's Point Douglas campaign.

"It could potentially create a perception that there is less support than may actually exist, but from the campaign perspective for us it's a significant cost when signs go missing. Certainly when they go missing by the hundreds,"Bellamytold CBC News.

"In my experience this is an extraordinary number of signs. I don't want to claim that the candidate or specific people are engineering this, but it certainly seems that when you are looking at numbers in the 450 range of signs going down, that there is some consistent if notco-ordinatedeffort,"Bellamysaid.

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Pointing fingers in Point Douglas: NDP blames Liberals after signs disappear - CBC.ca