I watch the news a lot. Sometimes my kids even give me grief over it when I flip on CNN at home in the evening.

"Dad, stop, you watch that stuff all day, you work at a newspaper, you need to move on," they say.

They may be right, but I do like to see how the networks handle the news.

I can tell you watching the Trent Lott story unfold over the past three weeks has provided more concrete evidence of an overt liberal bias than I have seen in many years.

It was stunning.

As we all know - how could we not, it was top-of-the-page and top-of-the-hour news almost every day - Lott was at a birthday party for retiring Sen. Strom Thurmond. Thurmond turned 100 this year.

Thurmond, a Republican from South Carolina, ran for president as a Dixiecrat in 1948. OK, that's 52 years ago.

Anyway, at the birthday party, Lott, the Republican senator from Mississippi, said if Thurmond had been elected, "maybe we wouldn't have had all these problems for all these years."

He didn't really say what problems, but no matter. Everybody knew what he had to mean. Everybody knows Thurmond had a big pro-segregation plank in his presidential platform 52 years ago.

So Lott must support segregation.

And, oh, by the way, in 1980-something he voted against the Martin Luther King holiday legislation. (So did some other senators and 90 U.S. representatives. I think we need to out all of them.)

Therefore, Lott must be a racist hatemonger who should be run out of Senate, or maybe even run out of town. Or maybe even drawn and quartered.

Sure, it was a stupid thing to say. No matter what he meant, it sounded like he was putting a positive spin on segregation and racism.

Ah, but the consequences.

Amid the media furor, Lott resigned his position as Senate Majority Leader on Friday.

And of course, the CNN folks were asking if that was enough. Should he also resign from the Senate, they asked the esteemed polticians and commentators they filmed for interviews?

I actually heard one anchor ask, "Can the Republicans overcome the taint of racism Trent Lott has placed on their party?"

How about that for some pejorative language?

Yeah, OK, you know what?

I'll go with the flow. I will concede Lott's egregious comments disqualify him for a role in the Senate. There is just no room for an overt racist like that in public life.

And now that the Demcrats and liberal media have established that very stringent standard, I simply want it applied equally, across the board, to all politicians, Democrat or Republican.

It's only fair, right? It may be right, but it will never happen. Chinese paratroopers will invade my living room before the media will ever treat this issue fairly.

The double standard is excruciatingly glaring.

Where was our very politically correct national media when the Demos made far more outrageous statements over the years?

Here's a quote from Senior Democrat Senator Robert Byrd, of West Virginia, in March of 2001:

"My old mom told me, 'Robert, you can't go to heaven if you hate anybody.' We practice that," the senator recalled. "There are white niggers. I've seen a lot of white niggers in my time - I'm going to use that word."

The media was quick to point out Lott's past remarks and his MLK vote.

So would it be fair to point out that Byrd was national treasurer of the Ku Klux Klan? Would it be fair to point out that Byrd has never publicly disavowed his association with the Klan?

Would it be fair to quote Byrd in 1944 on the issue of a desegregated miltary? "Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds."

Very eloquent, there, Bob. Allow me to paraphrase. You'd rather die than serve next to a black man.

And then there's the second most senior Senator, the honorable Fritz Hollings, the Democrat from South Carolina.

Here's a great quote from Hollings in 1993:

"Everybody likes to go to Geneva. I used to do it for the Law of the Sea conferences and you'd find these potentates from down in Africa, you know, rather than eating each other, they'd just come up and get a good square meal in Geneva."

Blacks as canibals, how very civilized of the senior Senator.

Hollings has referred to Hispanics as "wetbacks" and blacks as "darkies" during his tenure. He also labeled Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition "the blackbow coalition" and called then-Sen. Howard Metzenbaum (D-Ohio) "the senator from B'nai B'rith."

Oh, yeah, and then there was that little flag-raising ceremony down in Charleston. You know, the one where Hollings personally hoisted the Confederate flag over the State Capitol Building?

The flag is the topic of much media malignment, but the flag-raiser is never mentioned.

In fact there wasn't continuous, three-week coverage of any of those events.

And to dredge up Lott's past?

Come on.

Want to talk about the past? Want to talk about southern Demos and civil rights?

How about the late Sen. Al Gore Sr. who led a filibuster against the Civil Rights act of 1964?

Republican Senator Everett Dirksen from Illinois brokered the deal that ended the filibuster. The NAACP honored Dirksen for that fairly remarkable civil rights feat.

The Democrat Governor of Arkansas, Orval E. Faubus, deployed the National Guard to block the entrance into a public school by black students.

How about the other infamous southern Democrat Governor, George Wallace?

Southern Democrats have long been the most strident supporters of racist policies, but people like Byrd and Hollings can say whatever they want with no media sanction.

But if you're a Republican, you better not misspeak or the media will hound you out of office if it can.

It's painfully obvious that if Lott deserves to step down then so does Byrd and Hollings. But just as obvious is the certainty that it will never happen that way.

With regard to racism, the hypocrisy and bias in politics and the media sickens me. [[In-content Ad]]