The New York Times -- We're not even trying anymore.

To say that the New York Times has a liberal bias is kind of like announcing, “Prostitutes have STDs!” It goes without saying.

The Times’ Frank Rich has dedicated a piece http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/04/opinion/04rich.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&ref=opinion&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin to the “other preacher” if you will. The “other preacher” in this case is the televangelist John Hagee who has endorsed Republican John McCain (I designate McCain as a Republican because sometimes it gets hard to tell that he is actually a member of the GOP).

Anyone who has access to the Trinity Broadcasting Network or a local Christian Book Store will probably have some sort of familiarity with Rev. Hagee. He is boisterous, apocalyptic, and often outrageous. Hagee has frequently announced that the rapture of the Christian Church is imminent with each passing event, most notably during the 2006 war in Lebanon which he claimed was predicted in the Bible. That he expounds some loopy Christian theology is an understatement. Criticism of him is warranted and justifiable, just as it is with Jeremiah Wright.

The problem I find with Mr. Rich is something we have grown accustomed to with the Left. Everything can be equalized. If Obama has a crazy pastor, any pastor who associates with McCain must be crazy too. And if there is a crazy pastor associated with McCain, well then that only proves there is a conservative mainstream media bias otherwise Obama and Wright would still be walking hand-in-hand. Rich also perpetuated the lie that the Clintons’ and Obama have dealt with all their racial perplexities.

Then Rich descends into race-bashing the Republicans and how there are no black Republicans in the House and Senate which of course only goes to show that the Republicans are all white racists. From this entry one can see the same line of thought in Mr. Rich as that in Democratic Chairman Howard Dean when he praises the Democratic Party for being the party of diversity because it looks like the “face of America.”

Bull. What do the different races in a certain party add up to? Nothing but racial pandering. Mr. Rich fails to mention how it is the Republican Party that is supposed to encourage people to work hard and get a job so they won’t have to live on welfare while the Democrats make no effort of the sort. Albeit, for the past several years the Republicans have done nothing to even diminish the welfare state, but that is another issue for another day.

So why defend two people, McCain and Hagee, both of whom I fundamentally dislike? Perhaps it shows that there is still a least a modicum of difference between the parties. Perhaps it shows that the “enemy of my enemy” axiom does not apply to conservatives and the New York Times. Besides, Hagee’s endorsement of McCain does nothing for me. As an antiwar conservative I have a big bone to pick regarding McCain’s allegedly strongest and most knowledgeable issue.

But then again, thinking has never been one of McCain's strong points.