Here's how Post staffers Rosalind Helderman and Fredrick Kunkle launched into their lament of the pending budget cutbacks:

RICHMOND -- Virginia will do less for its residents, and expect local governments and private charities to do more, under a new state budget likely to have an impact for years to come. 

With Virginia facing what lawmakers say is the grimmest financial picture in memory, the House of Delegates and Senate adopted budgets last week that would shrink general spending to about $15 billion, or no more than was spent four years ago. In other words, Virginia would spend about the same amount on services as it did when there were 100,000 fewer residents and many fewer were in economic distress. 

What followed was a typical laundry list of scenarios the writers insisted "could" happen, including "[c]riminal defendants who cannot afford an attorney appear[ing] in court without one." Of course, seeing as the Constitution requires that indigent defendants be provided a public defender, it's quite odd for the Post to conclude any judge "could" let a trial proceed with a defendant unrepresented for lack of counsel. At any rate, National Review's Kevin Williamson has an excellent takedown of the article and its numerous liberal assumptions, which I've excerpted below (emphases mine):

"A new state budget likely to have an impact for years to come"? What could those words possibly hope to indicate? Does not every state budget have an impact for years to come? How does one spend $15 billion and not have an impact for years to come? Meaningless verbiage is one reason why people don't read old-fashioned newspapers.

But never mind the banal journalese; check out the question-begging: "Virginia will do less for its residents ...." Really? Is it impossible to spend more intelligently? Was the Virginia state budget such an unassailable masterpiece that a cut of $1 translates into an exactly representative amount of service forgone? What about $10? What about $1,000? Is there no room at all for economizing in Virginia?

And what about the other side of the spending/revenue question? If Virginia spends more, it has to tax more. Tax whom? Tax Virginians, that's whom. It's perfectly reasonable to have a debate about balancing the "do less" with the "take less," but the reporters and editors of the Washington Post do not even recognize that such a question exists. It's as though revenue comes into commonwealth coffers ex nihilo.

You can predict what comes next: The reporters call every interest group dependent upon state handouts — oh, the poor arts administrators! the agony of the MFAs! — and give them a forum to whinge about how horrible it will be to have spending reduced all the way down to 2006 levels. Does anybody in the world, anybody in Virginia, think a little fiscal restraint is in order? Down in the seventeenth (!) paragraph — which is to say, down in the part of the story that's only going to be read by these reporters' mothers, the people quoted in the story, and me — yes, we learn that "conservatives applaud attempts to hold the line on state spending on health care," and get a quote from Americans for Prosperity. But those parasites on the public purse protesting the proposed cuts — how many are identified as liberal groups? Zero, though organizations such as the Legal Aid Justice Center obviously merit such a description.

For the full critique by Williamson, click here.

*That was the online headline. The Metro section print edition headline reads "Va. lawmakers plan to do less with less."

Helderman and de Vise failed to consider the liberal leanings of the protesters, tagging the demonstrators in the lead paragraph as mere "campus activists" who are steamed over the state AG's "letter advising public universities to retreat from their policies against discrimination on the basis of sexual orienation." A few paragraphs later, Helderman and de Vise suggested that an "erosion in gay rights at state universities" would have detrimental effects on attracting and retaining students and faculty.

The problem is, Cuccinelli's legal opinion does not mandate a "retreat" from discrimination, he just noted that under Virginia law, any change in non-discrimination policy wording must be authorized by legislation.

Counseled Cuccinelli:

It is my advice that the law and public policy of the Commonwealth of Virginia prohibit a college or university from including ’sexual orientation,’ ‘gender identity,’ ‘gender expression,’ or like classification, as a protected class within its nondiscrimination policy, absent specific authorization from the General Assembly.

What's more, reports the Associated Press, Virginia colleges and universities cannot discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation anyway, pursuant to a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court:

The attorney general said his letter merely stated Virginia law, which prohibits discrimination because of "race, color, religion, national origin, sex, pregnancy, childbirth or related medical conditions, age, marital status, or disability," but makes no mention of sexual orientation.

Cuccinelli said the criticism was coming from people who have been frustrated in their attempts to change the law.

"None of them suggest our reading of the law is wrong. It's people who don't like the policy speaking up because it's their opportunity to go on the attack," he said.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia legal director Rebecca Glenberg said colleges are bound by U.S. Supreme Court decisions not to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation.

The Attorney General's ruling cannot overrule the High Court on this matter of policy, but Cuccinelli has every right to advise state agencies if and when they are deviating from the letter of the law.

The Virginia electorate, acting through their legislature, is more than free to change the law to specifically list "sexual orientation" on state institution non-discrimination policies. 

But that's not as juicy a newspaper article as one that loads its language with the objective of demonizing a conservative Republican office holder.

*"Students rise up for gay rights" was the print headline. The washingtonpost.com version headline reads, "Students irate at Cuccinelli over gay-rights policies."

But today, in a Metro section front page story, Post reporter Fredrick Kunkle noted that experts in law enforcement and academia doubt there's a solid case ground in empirical data for that notion (emphasis mine):

At the heart of the renewed debate is whether the gun-a-month law works. 

Supporters and opponents agree that the cap reduced the number of Virginia firearms recovered and traced by law enforcement officials in cities along the East Coast. 

Special Agent Michael Campbell of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives added, "Anecdotally, we've heard people we've arrested for firearms trafficking say that it was more difficult to find people to do straw purchases because they had to find more people."

Beyond anecdotes, however, it's not clear that the law reduced crime or gun-related violence, largely because there's no way to determine whether criminals simply found another way to buy guns. Tracing data, collected by ATF, offer only a limited view of the flow of firearms.

"I would say that there's suggestive evidence that the Virginia gun-a-month law did some good, but it's not determinative evidence," said Jens Ludwig, a professor at the University of Chicago.

A study by Gary Kleck, a professor at Florida State University, was far more skeptical. Writing in the UCLA law review last year, Kleck argued that high numbers of guns traced to states, including Virginia, have more to do with rates of gun ownership and theft than trafficking. He also wrote that trafficking accounts for an extremely small number of guns obtained by criminals and that gun-a-month laws have had no provable effect on homicide rates or violent crime.

Kleck also said the oft-reported story of people loading up trunks of Glocks in Southern gun shops and selling them on the streets of major cities is not borne out by law enforcement findings. He cites data showing that guns on the street sell for substantially less than retail price -- a point that undercuts the rationale for traffickers to buy from licensed dealers.

"There is at present no reliable evidence to affirmatively support the view that such traffickers are common enough to be important in supplying firearms to criminals," Kleck writes.

So, at best the policy is a modest success in fighting crime, although the evidence is spotty, and at worst it's an ill-conceived failure that needlessly infringes on the law-abiding individual's right to keep and bear arms.

But what good are facts and nuance to the ideologues in the editorial page who are content to declare by fiat that there's no reason why one gun per month isn't "enough" for Post subscribers in the Old Dominion?

Kunkle noted that Marshall couched his controversial comments in reference to a study by Virginia Commonwealth University that "was published in 2008 in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health and suggested that there is a higher risk of premature birth and low birth weight in children born to women who have had an abortion."

"Few seized on the remarks at the time Marshall made them," the Post's Fredrick Kunkle noted in his page B2 February 23 story, "[b]ut outrage built on social networking sites and political blogs after some Virginia newspapers picked up the story from Capital News Service, a program at VCU's School of Mass Communications."

But which blogs, exactly? It's not a stretch to imagine it was mostly left-wing or Democratic blogs seeking to hype a controversy to make Virginia Republicans -- who control the House of Delegates -- look bad, particularly in an election year in which the Democratic majority in the state senate is in jeopardy.

Yet Kunkle failed to inform readers which blogs tipped him off to the story and what political axes they have to grind.

Kunkle then cited an ostensibly apolitical man-on-the-street to express his disgust:

"I am amazed that someone has been able to slander my child, my wife and my God in one comment," said Brett Wills, 38, a Staunton paint salesman who is the father of an 8-year-old boy with autism. "To imply that someone's disabilities are an act of God to punish women in an immoral society is just the most outrageous thing I've ever heard." 

Wills is entitled to his opinion, but how did Kunkle, based in Washington, come across a random guy from a city in Virginia 160 miles to the southwest?

It turns out Wills is hardly an apolitical Joe Sixpack. A January 8, 2010 story on WHSV.com quoted Wills's anger about proposed budget cutbacks laid out by outgoing liberal Gov. Tim Kaine (D-Va.):

City and county governments across Virginia are facing the grim prospect that 2010 may be worse than 2009.

Leaders in the public and private sector, along with hundreds of other concerned citizens, met at James Madison University Thursday for a regional hearing on Gov. Tim Kaine's proposed budget for the 2010-2012 biennium.

A survey conducted by the Virginia Association of Counties and the Virginia Municipal League found that nearly 60 percent of local governments initiated hiring freezes or cut funding in 2009. About 45 percent dipped into reserves to close budget gaps, and 70 percent reduced or eliminated projects.

City and county leaders hope their budgets will balance come June 30, the end of the fiscal year, but where state funding will be further slashed is still unknown.

Kaine has proposed cuts in a wide variety of areas, but one that drew significant concern from people attending Thursday's hearing was health care.

For Brett Wills, caring for his autistic son can be a challenge.

"This tightrope here represents what us families with special-needs kids and special-needs adults walk pretty much our entire lives and their entire lives," says Wills, who lives in Augusta County.

During the public hearing, he visually demonstrated with a tightrope, a safety net and a puppet what cuts in state funding mean to families like his.

"The Medicaid waivers are the stabilizing influence that keep them out of that inadequate safety net. We do not need a shorter stick," says Wills.

Kaine proposes cuts to waiver programs that pay for care. People currently on the waiting list would stay there.

Kunkle then noted that "[a]n online petition called for Marshall's resignation, but failed to note the role left-wing blogs -- such as Blue Commonwealth -- are playing in promoting the petition.

To his credit, Kunkle did note that Marshall has apologized for his "poorly chosen words" and noted the Republican legislator is such a champion of government spending on children with disabilities that he was threatened with expulsion from the Republican caucus last year due to his stand in favor of a mandate that insurance companies cover "specialized therapy needed by autistic children."

That being said, Kunkle poorly served readers by portraying the Marshall gaffe as an incident that bubbled up the media food chain without the concerted effort of liberal activists.

What's more, while there are plenty of conservative Christians who would strongly disagree with Marshall's theology, Kunkle devoted just one paragraph -- the 18th in a 20-paragraph story -- to a conservative activist who dismissed Marshall's statement while emphasizing the validity of the VCU study that prompted Marshall's remarks:

"I think there are studies medically demonstrating that there are future health risks to abortion," said Chris Freund, a spokesman for the conservative Family Foundation of Virginia. "To say that's evidence of God's judgment goes too far." 

Anyone can disagree with Marshall's personal religious beliefs, but the scientific study that prompted them is harder to dismiss outright, which is why drowning out the study with noise about Marshall's alleged insensitivity is the tack of the media here.

According to MSNBC, one law enforcement official, who was not named, said "the four men arrested for attempting to tamper with the phones in the New Orleans office of Sen. Mary Landrieu (D) were not trying to intercept or wiretap the calls." This statement comports with the affidavit filed in court after O'Keefe and company were arrested, which did not mention wiretapping or bugging, and only referred to the "tampering" of phone lines (h/t Patterico).

But the Boston Globe parroted this false accusation this morning in a gossip blog post about one of the alleged perpetrators, Joe Basel. The Globe--the same Globe that complained about ACORN's "trial-by-video"--called him a "political dirty trickster who was busted in a Watergate-style bugging operation earlier this week," and said again a couple paragraphs later that Basel was "bagged by the feds allegedly trying to bug the phones" in Landrieu's office. At least the Globe writers said "allegedly" the second time.

The L.A. Times also issued the false claim that the crew had tried to "bug" Landrieu's phones, and explicitly tried to tie O'Keefe and company to the perpetrators of the Watergate break-in:

Filmmaker James O’Keefe III is 25, meaning he was born about 13 years after five men were arrested for trying to bug the offices of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate complex in Washington. The subsequent scandal, which led to the resignation of the burglars’ boss, President Richard M. Nixon, was fodder for history books by the time O’Keefe was old enough to read them. Chances are, he didn’t.

O’Keefe, the Internet “journalist” who became an overnight sensation after his undercover reports revealed unethical behavior by the liberal activist group ACORN, now finds himself in the middle of his own bugging scandal.

Putting the word journalist in quotation marks is a nice touch, but the fact remains that O'Keefe did not try to bug anyone's phones.

CBS News also trumpeted these false charges. referring to the accused as "Phone Bug Suspects" in a headline, and "Men Accussed of Attempting to Bug La. Senator's Phone" it the sub-headline. A CBS News video title calls the incident a "Watergate Style Break-In".

A host of other smaller newspapers claimed that O'Keefe tried to "bug" the Senator's office, including the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the Alexandria Echo Press.

The Washington Post, unlike all of these outlets, took the facts into account and issued a correction today, saying, "Earlier versions of this story incorrectly reported that James O’Keefe faced charges in an alleged plot to bug the office of Sen. Mary Landrieu. The charges were related to an alleged plot to tamper with a phone system. The headline incorrectly referred to a plot to bug the phone and a caption incorrectly referred to an alleged wiretap scheme."

All of the sources that parroted this erroneous (if the law enforcement official and official court document are to be believed) claim should do the same: correct the record and admit that O'Keefe's arrest bears little resemblance to the Watergate scandal. There was no bugging or wiretapping going on, and claims to the contrary are irresponsible. Political disagreement is no excuse for journalistic malfeasance.

Organizing for America and the Democratic Party each have forms on their websites for supporters to write letters to the editors of their local papers. Both have suggested "talking points" next to the submission form. Both advise supporters to use their own words, but talking points from both of the sites have appeared in letters to the editor in a multitude of newspapers nationwide.

"Our system works better for the insurance companies that [sic] it does for the American people. Tens of millions of Americans have no health insurance, living one accident away from total financial disaster." That exact quote, a suggested talking point at OFA's website, has appeared--typo and all--in the San Marcos Daily Record, the Berkeley Daily Planet, the Petersburg Progress-Index, and the Madison Capitol Times. A version with the typo corrected appeared in the Huntsville Times.

At the Democratic Party's website, readers find these talking points:

On Saturday, Nov. 7, a bipartisan majority of the House of Representatives made history by passing H.R. 3962, the Affordable Health Care for America Act.

After nearly a century of false starts, this was the first time a chamber of Congress has ever passed comprehensive health insurance reform. This is a historic accomplishment.

Representatives who voted for this bill deserve thanks for resisting tremendous pressure from the insurance industry lobbyists and standing up for their constituents.

Those who did not vote for the bill have one last opportunity to reconsider and support reform in the upcoming final House vote — and they should do so.

A vote for this bill was a vote to provide secure and stable coverage for Americans with insurance, expand coverage for those who do not have insurance, lower costs for families and businesses, and begin to reduce the deficit.

Those words appeared--verbatim or close to it--in at least 14 different newspapers, as documented by Patterico, despite the DNC's insistence that supporters "not use these points verbatim."

In fairness, the GOP also has suggested talking points for letters to the editor on its website. But this blogger has only been able to turn up one verbatim use of the suggested language in a newspaper (the Bay City Times of Michigan).

In 2003, William Klein accused the Republican Party in the Chritian Science Monitor of "abusing news ethics" for doing the exact same thing OFA and the Democrats are doing now. "The letters column is supposed to be a breath of fresh air, an open and genuine discussion that reflects the community's views," he added, and concluded that "We shouldn't let our views, and the places we express them, be so cravenly manipulated. Keep off the AstroTurf, and let the sun shine in!"

The New York Times featured a prominent story on the practices by the GOP. The controversy also got coverage on CNN, according to a Nexis search. We will see if these efforts at astroturfing get comparable coverage.

Given these prior reactions to such practices by Republicans, we are left only to believe that if letters began sprouting up across the country parroting Republican talking points, the story would be larger than Ellie Light, and might even be worth the mainstream media's time.

That brings us to the Washington Post -- no fan of incoming Republican Governor-elect Bob McDonnell (R-Va.) -- which today counseled the incoming executive to "choose to be a problem-solver" on the state's transportation concerns by raising taxes.

Of course, this lobbying for tax increases is hardly new. The paper endorsed tax increases during the 2009 campaign and continued its pro-tax hike drumbeat without skipping a beat the day after the election. As my colleague Scott Whitlock noted on November 5:

During the 2009 Virginia gubernatorial election, the Washington Post waged a relentless campaign to defeat Republican Bob McDonnell. Starting on Wednesday, after the GOP nominee received almost 59 percent of the vote, the newspaper began dispensing advice: Raise taxes.

On Wednesday, a Post editorial assessed the "lessons" of the election and whined, "We remain skeptical of the flimsy filigree he passed off as a transportation plan, which rejects any fresh taxes to pay for new roads. But by dint of his victory he has earned the right to show it will work." [Emphasis added.]

The new year sees no new tack from the Post on tax hikes.

After sizing up McDonnell as a "shrewd, forward-looking politician" who "will be judged a failure" if he fails to fix Virginia's transportation woes, the Post's January 5 editorial helpfully counseled McDonnell that it would be perfectly acceptable if his administration made peace with tax increases, even if it did so by deploying clever semantics to attempt to dull the sting of fresh tax hikes (emphasis mine):

[McDonnell] has named Thomas M. Davis III, the former Northern Virginia congressman, as co-chair of his transition team's transportation study group, and Sean T. Connaughton, the respected former chairman of Prince William County's Board of Supervisors, as the state's next secretary of transportation. Mr. Davis and Mr. Connaughton are pragmatic moderates; in fact, both are disliked by many of the conservatives who form Mr. McDonnell's base. Notwithstanding the governor-elect's anti-tax pledges, both would be well advised to present the governor-elect with a menu of transportation-funding options that includes increased revenue, including new and local-option taxes, possibly rebranded as "user fees."