Underreported stories of 2009

Most news outlets end the year with extensive reviews of their top headlines and scoops. But the stories they didn't cover deserve much greater attention. Journalistic sins of omission are often far more damning and more telling than sins of commission.

Let's start with President Obama's ongoing radical czar problem. Until Bay Area Marxist agitator-turned-green-jobs-czar Van Jones resigned in September, most Americans hadn't heard of him. Mainstream newspaper readers and network news viewers were left in the dark about his cop-killer-supporting activism, his endorsement of nutball Sept. 11 conspiracies and his advocacy of using capitalism-sabotaging environmental policies as "the engine for transforming the whole society."

Fox News, talk radio and conservative blogs pounded Jones' embarrassing public record for months until the White House and its press corps enablers were forced to acknowledge the firestorm. Only after Obama threw Jones under the bus did New York Times editor Jill Abramson confess that the Fishwrap of Record suffered from "insufficient in-tuned-ness." She promised better coverage of Obama scandals.

So, what's she waiting for, pray tell?

Obama has appointed unaccountable czars by the mile whose statements and policies have yet to hit national media front pages. The "safe schools czar," Kevin Jennings, is a far-left activist whose organization, GLSEN (the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network) is infamous among parents' groups for promoting explicit, outrageously age-inappropriate sexual lessons in the classroom. GLSEN's recommended reading for teens includes pamphlets promoting leather bars and public sex in parks and lurid books describing incest, rape, adult-child fantasies and essay collections in which one author recounted playing "sex therapist" at the age of 6 with a 5-year-old friend, and exploring "our sexuality to its fullest."

GLSEN's corporate sponsors include Eastman Kodak, Ernst & Young, PepsiCo and Time Warner. Eastman Kodak defended its sponsorship as an expression of its commitment to "diversity." Secretary of Education Arne Duncan also said he stood by Jennings earlier this year, before this material was exposed in-depth on Fox News, talk radio and conservative blogs. Where are the vaunted watchdogs of the Fourth Estate to follow up now?

Liberal journalists were also AWOL on the Obama White House's U.S.

Villafuerte is entangled in the railroading of Denver Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Cory Voorhis — whom federal prosecutors tried to punish after he blew the whistle on sweetheart deals for criminal illegal aliens during the 2006 gubernatorial campaign. A jury acquitted Voorhis of all federal charges. He's trying to get his job back. At least one of his supervisors has admitted lying.

Villafuerte served on then-Democrat gubernatorial candidate Bill Ritter's campaign team while on leave from the Denver District Attorney's office, and from all Denver Post news accounts was deeply involved in the witch hunt against Voorhis.

Villafuerte and the Justice Department evaded critics as long as they could, but when U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, pressed Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano for answers on Villafuerte's meddling, the stonewall crumbled. There's still a raft of unanswered questions about the cover-up and the feds' dangerously lax policies toward criminal illegal aliens.

Speaking of the corrupted DOJ, where's the heat on crime-coddling Attorney General Eric Holder for his continued obstructionism in the New Black Panther Party Election Day voter intimidation case? In a highly unprecedented move, Holder and his political appointees dropped default judgments against the NBPP's billy-club-wielding thugs who threatened white poll workers and voters in Philadelphia last November.

The nonpartisan U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has demanded answers and issued subpoenas to find out why the cases were abandoned after the George W. Bush administration had won them. The DOJ has ordered its employees not to comply or cooperate. And over the holidays, the DOJ veteran voting rights section chief who originally handled the case was unceremoniously evicted from the Washington, D.C., office and moved to South Carolina.

One of the NBPP bullies was a local Democratic official. Another of the defendants, NBPP head Malik Shabazz, has decried the probe as a racist "political witch hunt" against Holder.

Grievance hustlers are counting on liberal journalists to give them cover. A nation of cowards, indeed.

Michelle Malkin is the author of "Culture of Corruption: Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks & Cronies" (Regnery 2009). Her e-mail address is malkinblog@gmail.com.

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