From Heritage Newspapers:

On Senior Day 2011, more than 100 University of Michigan Law School grads walked out on a speech by Ohio Senator Rob Portman.

Last Year, President Obama spoke to the University of Michigan. He criticized “poisonous” rhetoric and advised students to sample opinions of both left and right. President Obama also opposes same-sex marriage along with the majority of Americans.
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Even as President Obama maintains close to 50,000 troops in Iraq and continues to escalate and expandthe war in Afghanistan, the antiwar movement in America continues to shrink (PDF).

So, what happened?

Reason.tv visited two antiwar protests—one left-leaning, one libertarian—in an attempt to answer that question. Author and historian Thaddeus Russell and Reason Senior Editor Brian Doherty also weigh in.

War, it seems, is a bipartisan venture, which is reflected by the fact that Democrats have a favorable view of Obama’s foreign policy, despite its remarkable similarity to George W. Bush’s foreign policy. And though there have been rumblings of antiwar sentiment from some on the Right, Republicans remain strongly in favor of an interventionist foreign policy.

Although public sentiment is turning against the war in Afghanistan, the always-shifting withdrawal deadlines and the unwillingness to touch defense spending mean that this bipartisan war is likely to continue far into the future.

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On October 3rd 2010, during an Illinois Democrat ‘Get Out The Vote’ pep-rally, Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky defied her own party’s demand for an end to ‘Hate in the Debate’ by comparing Republicans to Stormtroopers. And the Democrat audience roared with cheers for the message.

The Democrats offer nothing outside of the one-dimensional narrative that Republicans are evil and must be destroyed. This from the party that once criticized Bush 43 for his black and white terror policy towards our allies (‘you’re either with us or against us’).

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Media Matters is taking the Tea Party Convention to task regarding its limited credentialing for press access.

Tea Party convention hosts Palin and bans the press. Except Palin employer Fox News

Media message from the right wing: If you don’t give the Tea Party “fair coverage,” then you will be banned from covering its convention.

And who says the conservative movement doesn’t hold journalism in contempt?

So….when a quasi political convention held by a private group selectively excludes dissenting media, that’s contempt. But when the White House selectively excludes dissenting media, singling them out for vilification, that’s just fine with Media Matters.

For the record, I would like to see lamestream media outlets there. More often than not, when they cover the Tea Parties, they embarrass themselves in a way that simultaneously exposes their bias, while energizing and growing the base.

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