What’s wanting is the disclaimer of the journals’ owners, not their hired help.

I agree with robertdfaeinman that a disclaimer should be requested of journalists. Some professions already have it; in medicine, for example, it is both useful and enforced. If you take 5 grand say from a pharma or a device company you have to declare it practically forever and when you speak or write about any of their products, readers notice and place your pov in perspective. There is a real concern for corrupting influence when companies might try to buy off the thought leaders .

Similarly, it would be nice to see journalists disclaim their own voting record, party affiliation, memberships, past activism, donations (including their spouses’ donations).

I think you have actually framed this wrong. To be “fired” assumes some manner of job, some form of entitlement. I’m sure our conservative friends will join us in agreeing that being able to write for the Post’s OpEd page is a rare privilege, one that in all fairness should be earned anew each week, meritocracy rules after all. So the appropriate question is what have Krauthammer and Shlaes etc. actually done to continue to earn their spots over thousands of worthy contenders?

Brad ‘Property Is Theft’ Delong? Who didn’t know?

My Father has been criticizing Bush forever. He is so left-wing that he considers himself English (not British) and his own son can’t be “English” because he has a Spanish grandfather. Further, my Father thinks “they” should build many more prisons, that women are fair game as soon as they start menstruating, and that all gypsies are criminals (He can’t understand why his mate hates Jews though).

My Mother has been criticizing Bush forever. She is so left-wing that she rang me yesterday to spend 10 minutes complaining about the new “wave” of Philipino immigrants (in Adelaide!), and like all good radical feminists she thinks that 15 year old schoolgirls gang-raped by sailors were “asking for it”.

It’s good to see that criticizing Bush qualifies them to be in such an elite camp of latte-sipping liberals. I shall have to tell them about what commies they have become, by dint of this revolutionary and radical political position they have adopted. I’m sure Brad de Long will be looking forward to many enlightened conversations with them!

Honesty and using facts are just some sort of leftist weakness. How can one prove one’s points when the facts contradict your thesis? You can’t, so lying is a necessity. The thing about the this type of person is that they don’t see any difficulty. If you’ve never read it, try Harry Frankfort’s book “On Bullshit”, he explains the difference between a liar and a bullshitter.

One knows that they are lying and knows what the truth is, but choses to ignore it, the other says whatever is necessary to win an argument.

The rightwing has both types operating at the moment.

Which would explain why the Post has Stopped Making Sense.

As long as one’s facts are not bereft of context, distorted, or otherwise misleading. Zev Chafets defended Rush Limbaugh by saying that the incendiary things he says are not factually false, so it’s ok. That’s a pretty sorry view.

Who would think that state propaganda organs would publish propagandists?

Why that would make America extra-super-duper exceptional.

The US has a long tradition of such efforts. In fact the original broadsheets were designed so that propagandists of all stripes could get their message out. Did people reading the Daily Worker in the early 1900’s expect to see an article bashing labor?

The problem is that people have been misled into thinking that the major media outlets are “impartial”. They’re not. They are all owned by, large, powerful, business interests whose own concerns are more allied with those on the right and with other conservatives.

In the USSR people understood what Pravda was about why is it so hard for those in the US to make the some connections when it comes to WaPo or NBC news?

Shlaes is a sock puppet for the Scaife, Koch, Olin libertarian movement that underwrites most of the conservative think tanks. Apparently they have managed to take over much of the news operations of the NY Times and Wapo as well.

Here is her dossier on Media Transparency:
http://www.mediatransparency.org/grantsearchresults.php?searchString=Amity%20Shlaes

All that is needed is for these publications to print a truth in advertising claim in each issue:
“The Washington Post is a full partner in the vast right wing conspiracy”.

Of course it is our duty to point out the bias since they have declined to do so themselves.