This is seriously pissing me off. So Steny Hoyer won House Majority leader over John Murtha. This is a news item to be sure, but it’s really amazing how the media, nearly universally, is inflating this to be some kind of “in-fighting” amongst the Democrats. From Newsweek:

If Speaker-to-be Pelosi is going to succeed as Speaker of the House, she had better learn—fast—from the fiasco known as the Hoyer-Murtha Race. She violated every conceivable rule of Boss-like behavior: she lost, she lost publicly, she lost after issuing useless and unenforceable threats to people she barely had met, knowing (or having reason to know) that they would tell the world about her unsuccessful arm-twisting. And she lost big: by 149 to 86 votes.

Murtha also was a flawed vehicle: brave on Iraq, to be sure, but otherwise known around town as a rather narrowly focused, earmark-hungry journeyman. He didn’t further his cause (or Pelosi’s) by declaring that the only reason he was interested in ethics reform was because the Speaker-to-be was interested in it. It also didn’t help Murtha that he was the star of FBI surveillance tapes in the ABSCAM influence-peddling case two decades ago.

Damn liberal media, look how much they’re apologizing for Pelosi and look how blindly supportive they are of Jack Murtha! Amazing. Folks, Newsweek is hardly a conservative rag, and here they are saying that because Pelosi supported Murtha and he didn’t win the vote, this is a war of some kind.

The only thing is, no one involved in the situation is calling it that. At a recent press conference, the three seemed perfectly amiable and to any reasonable observer Pelosi was supporting Murtha for his war position and the Dems at large supported Hoyer. Far as I’m concerned it’s no big deal. Well, let’s move on to the New York Times, yeah?

House Democrats chose Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland as their new majority leader on Thursday, rejecting the choice of the incoming speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and straining the unity of the new majority party.

…

Despite the internal acrimony that has clouded the Democratic victory celebration of last week, the leadership team that will take control of the House in January left their closed meeting in the Cannon House Office Building, joined hands and pledged to work together in the months ahead.

Son of a bitch. Okay okay okay, that’s just Newsweek and the New York Times. The Washington Post is usually nice and liberal. I can’t imagine they’d latch onto this story, right? Well let’s take a look.

House Democrats elected Rep. Steny H. Hoyer (Md.) the new majority leader yesterday over strong opposition from Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), exposing a deep political divide even before the party takes control.

This is ridiculous. The Democrats have been in power for… about 8 days now and already the media is just leaping on every opportunity to pick them apart. Unbelievably, un-freakin’-believably, the least incendiary article came from, of all places, FOX News. Take a look. No suggestions of a damaged party, all involved treated fairly but honestly. I’m baffled.

Hell’s frozen over, folks. The “liberal media” is mercilessly trying to push a wider rift in the Democratic party, and FOX actually writes a fair article. Now, granted, this was their web site and the AP helped with the article, it wasn’t exactly Sean Hannity saying “it was a tight race and Pelosi’s guy lost, but they’re all working together now,” but it’s something.

I’m speechless. While the video is not complete, I’ve seen nothing to indicate that this kid did anything but refuse to show his ID while leaving the UCLA library. Watch the entire thing. It’s unreal.

[youtube]AyvrqcxNIFs[/youtube]

Listen at about 6:40 when a policeman tells the kid in the white shirt “back up or you’re gonna get tased, too.” This is an unbelievable abuse of power. Of course, I await Bill O’Reilly’s outrage since he loves getting furious at videos of college craziness. I’m also keeping an eye on the Freeper take, wondering who’s side they’ll be on.