14 thoughts on “Let’s End this Leftist Myth that FOX News is “Right-Wing” Right Now”

1. Oh please- Shepard Smith- who has been with Fox since their inception. and is one of their most watched anchors (asome ratings put him as the top).

   So ah yes. The token liberal- and one who brings Fox a LOT of viewers (and hence a lot of money). And that counteracts their entire army of conservatives? Their allowing Rove and more then a half dozen Romney staff to pose as “newsmen” without revealing their conflicts?

   But of course- Fox can’t possibly be *truly* conservative if they parted ways with Glen Beck now can they?

   • drugsandotherthings – So let’s find out what your knowledge of Shepard Smith really is. Like many others, we all know his from his days in our home town of Panama City, FL. How about you, do you remember Shepard Smith from watching him live his life in our small community?

     No? Well, let me tell you …boy. Liberalism doesn’t even touch the tip of Mr. Smith’s liberalism.

     I suppose you’ll also tell us that Bob Beckel is a good conservative also?

2. If I had a nickel for every time I heard some variation of, “Stop watching Faux News.”

   Fox is a mixed bag. My take, Shep is intolerable, for sure. O’Reilly, the quintessential moderate, seems to believe that balance = truth, and of course he is wrong and he does more harm than good. Greta, not a fox by any means, but she deserves credit for giving Obama a lot of grief, although she seems to be buddies with Boehner; I’ll give her a passing grade. Hannity? I don’t know what his principles are, but he sure is a bull-dog; sure, why not? Gutberg, a moron? Perhaps, but I can relate to that guy, he is funny, and he gets people’s numbers.

   I’d say that’s a pretty good sampling. Overall, I will give Fox a C-, and Fox Business a B-. Pravda West, straight Fs, of course; CNN might pull off a D- on its best day.

   RNL, you guys all get A+’s, way to go.

3. I agree with You Justin except for Hannity…..He shilled for Romney bigtime during the Primary process, He proved himself to be another RINO with his constant airing of Dick Morris and Karl Rove and his constant pandering on Radio to these Liberal Black Sycophants……..I think in the end he’s trying to read the tea leaves and decide where he can survive in the Still Liberal Dominated press……In short I think he’s a Phoney.After Beck and Rush in the AM I just turn him off……I wish Mark Levine would decrease Hannity’s air time on his show…..Sean H. is just trying to claim Conservative legitimacy by being associated with Levine.

   Joe you are correct about FOX living up to its’ Balance moniker……I sometimes wish it was more Conservative in order to TRUELY balance the overall press picture…..the Left pressured for Beck to go…..and wasn’t Judge Napolitano ousted too ? Seems to me FOX could do a lot of good by airing some good basic Programs on What the Constitution actually says and what it stands for to counterbalance all this talk about “a living Document”.

4. Jefferson did not use the words ‘living constitution, but he may as well have….

   “… laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.”.

   • Gee, you think that might have been why the amendment process was written into the Constitution?

     Jefferson never intended for our foundational principles to be as malleable as clay. He never envisioned that the judiciary would take the clear wording of that document and “interpret” them to create things that aren’t there. That is why his words in the Declaration are relevant:

     Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

     In that statement lies the reason for the deliberate nature of the change process.

     Prudence. Caution. Debate. Reason.

     In that sense Jefferson did believe in a “living” Constitution, just not in the sense of the capricious “flavor of the month” way that you do.

     • He never envisioned that the judiciary would take the clear wording of that document and “interpret” them to create things that aren’t there.

       Ah, boss? With humility and the utmost respect, I would submit that, not only did Jefferson expect the courts to be the undoing of our constitution and government, he predicted it:

       At the establishment of our constitutions, the judiciary bodies were supposed to be the most helpless and harmless members of the government. Experience, however, soon showed in what way they were to become the most dangerous; that the insufficiency of the means provided for their removal gave them a freehold and irresponsibility in office; that their decisions, seeming to concern individual suitors only, pass silent and unheeded by the public at large; that these decisions, nevertheless, become law by precedent, sapping, by little and little, the foundations of the constitution, and working its change by construction, before any one has perceived that that invisible and helpless worm has been busily employed in consuming its substance. In truth, man is not made to be trusted for life, if secured against all liability to account.

       –Thomas Jefferson, letter to Monsieur A. Coray, Oct 31, 1823

       I can quote many more of his words to this effect, but I think this should suffice to prove my point. I mean, he pretty much described exactly what has and continues to happen, didn’t he? Other founders echoed Jefferson’s sentiments, one of them even lamenting that, if the courts would not hold to the original intent of the framers, the constitution would be but a lump of clay in their hands. It’s just sad that those men knew what would be the end of their work — yet they did it anyway. :*)

       • “Anticipated”, “reflected”and “intended” are very different concepts. Your Jefferson quote is from 1823, some 34 years after the Constitution was ratified. His lament was that in hindsight, the design wasn’t effective enough to stop the tomfoolery. I have to believe that this means that what was drafted was deemed sufficient and therefore the changes he lamented were not intended.

         • Point taken, but then, in 1821, he held the same opinion and even stated that he had held that opinion for some time. So it does leave open the question as to how early on Jefferson may have identified the judiciary — as designed — as a likely threat to the union:

           It has long, however, been my opinion, and I have never shrunk from its expression… that the germ of dissolution of our federal government is in the constitution of the federal Judiciary;… working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little today and a little tomorrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a thief, over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall be usurped.

           –Thomas Jefferson, letter to Charles Hammond, August 18, 1821

           Case in point:

           The Constitution… is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary which they may twist and shape into any form they please.

           –Thomas Jefferson, letter to Judge Spencer Roane, September 6, 1819

           Or even earlier:

           [T]he opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not, not only for themselves, in their, own sphere of action, but for the Legislature and Executive also in their spheres, would make the Judiciary a despotic branch.

           –Thomas Jefferson, letter to Abigail Adams, September 11, 1804

           At this point, Jefferson is only 15 years past ratification.

           • Again, those quotes are post-ratification and speak none too favourably toward the disposition of the judicial branch toward making it up as they went along. They all read as if they were a huge “Oh, shit! We forgot something!”

             I think you are proving my point that this is NOT what he intended when he was drafting the Constitution.

             Our boy mel left out the sentence immediately preceding the 1816 Jefferson quote which was:

             “I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and Constitutions.”

             From the same letter, one which I quoted here, we have:

             But it will be said, it is easier to find faults than to amend them. I do not think their amendment so difficult as is pretended. Only lay down true principles, and adhere to them inflexibly. Do not be frightened into their surrender by the alarms of the timid, or the croakings of wealth against the ascendency of the people. If experience be called for, appeal to that of our fifteen or twenty governments for forty years, and show me where the people have done half the mischief in these forty years, that a single despot would have done in a single year; or show half the riots and rebellions, the crimes and the punishments, which have taken place in any single nation, under kingly government, during the same period. The true foundation of republican government is the equal right of every citizen, in his person and property, and in their management.

             Doesn’t really sound like TJ and Imam Greg are quite on the same wavelength, now does it?

             • True, TJ was not the person Greg likes to paint him as. However, TJ had no hand in drafting the Constitution (he was in France at the time, wasn’t he?). I only point to the likelihood that TJ would have been of great service in regard tot he courts had he been there as he could have drawn from his experience in helping to draft the VA constitution. If one digs into his earlier work, you will find signs of TJ’s concern over the judicial arms of govt. in evidence long before the 1800′s, he just didn’t get as clear in his critiques until later, after his concerns manifested themselves.

               but the point here is as you say: greg got it wrong — again!

               • True. He was appointed in 1785 but he and Madison were tight, so it is very likely that he was having a little influence. I guess the use of the word “intended” implied that I assumed that he wrote the words and that isn’t true, but the case can be made that what happened and has continued to happen is contradictory to what he thought and expressed in his writings both pre- and post-drafting and ratification.

                 • Once again, you cleared up my muddled ranting. Thanks, Boss

   • Jefferson did not use the words ‘living constitution, but he may as well have….

     “… laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.”.

     Jefferson would have NEVER accepted that the changes in the times were an excuse to abandon the rule of law. He would have pointed to the Amendment process — or the Constitutional Convention option — as the proper means by which to affect whatever changes society felt it needed.

     This is what happens when one googles a quote without taking the time to get to know the man: one habitually and routinely quotes him out of context and — in this case — out of character. Sort of like interpreting the constitution to suit one’s immediate needs.