The Padilla Case: Media Bias Continues

Reporters are supposed to report the facts. But if they do so in a highly selective way, they're writing editorials, which is increasingly common these days. Take the Associated Press, an increasingly egregious offender in this regard when it comes to all things Bush:

A divided Supreme Court turned back a challenge to the Bush administration's wartime detention powers, rejecting an appeal from U.S. citizen Jose Padilla who until recently had been held as an enemy combatant without traditional legal rights.

Okay, so far, you say. But what's a divided Supreme Court. Reading this article, looks like a 3-3 tie vote turned back the lefty challenge. But if that's what you concluded, you'd be wrong. There are, after all, 3 more justices. The Supremes voted 6-3, in fact, in favor of the government's case, as we later find out in the Washington Post, mostly behaving itself for a change:

Kennedy's opinion was joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts and Justice John Paul Stevens. It takes four votes for the court to agree to hear an appeal, known as a petition for certiorari. But Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito voted against granting Padilla's petition, while only three, Justices David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer, voted in favor.

Gosh, that doesn't look like a divided court to us. It looks like a majority opinion. After all, where is it writ in the law or anywhere else that anything other than a 9-0 decision was "divided?" (Would that make a 5-4 victory a "stunning defeat?") Anything to deny the Bushies a major victory on this important case.

Yes, the Supremes warned the admin to be careful on this kind of stuff, something the AP piece speculates on at great length, allowing the lefties and dissenters far more ink than those who voted with the administration on this one. Typical is this comment:

Deborah Pearlstein, director of law and national security at Human Rights First, said: "This is a warning shot for the administration. It would be hard for the administration not to see it that way."

David Horowitz drills down on the efforts of Human Rights First in this case:

Whatever the legal merits of Padilla's detention, HRF ignores the fact that Padilla is "one symptom of the fact that the core group [of terrorists] is still around," as an FBI official told Time magazine. HRF refuses to acknowledge the state of war that already exists between Islamic terrorists and the United States, and strives to employ legal means to abet those terrorists.

Horowitz also details HRF's extensive lefty foundational connections and funding sources, including its direct and indirect links to George Soros and its current leader's fealty to Marxist principals. He notes that HRF has been tireless in its efforts to thwart border security and prosecute terrorists. Read the whole story, with plenty of links, here. With friends like HRF, well, you know the rest. Yet these are the folks who provide "authority" for the AP's slightly altered version of history. Meanwhile, just in case you forgot: 6-3 is a majority, not a "divided court" in AP Newspeak.