Today on the way home from the grocery store, I noticed, in its coverage of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform act, NPR was doing something unusual: I was hearing from conservative groups.

At first, I thought NPR was simply attempting to be fair in its coverage of something. I'm not used to hearing sound bites from the NRA, pro-life, and other conservative groups on NPR. But eventually, after I noticed NPR aired not a single "liberal" voice criticising McCain-Feingold, I figured out what NPR was doing:

NPR to left-leaning listeners: Only conservative groups are hurt by this law. You must support this idea because groups like the NRA and National Right-to-Life hate it. Therefore you must love it. Repeat. You must love McCain-Feigngold and protect it at all costs.

And of course, that just boils down to: You must make every effort to ensure only judges with imaginative, far-left readings of the Constitution will ever serve in our country. After all, it would be horrible if some judge found a right to free speech lurking somewhere in that First Amendment, wouldn't it?

Of course, in real life, NARAL was muzzled just as much as Right-to-Life, as was the Gun Control Inc. vs. the NRA. When McCain-Feingold was being debated groups on boths ends of the spectrum cried "foul".

But you won't hear that angle from NPR.

A bit more bias was evident: NPR reported the NRA would no longer be able to mention specific politicians in its ads, but would still be able to show a URL which could contain information about candidates. NPR described this as the NRA "circumventing" the law, rather than "compliance".

Of course, liberal groups are and were and will be doing the same thing. But it's so much better to pick a conservate group NPR knows many of its listeners will reflexively hate as an example, and then use words which imply its compliance with laws is actually "circumvention".

There were several more places in the article where this occurred.

Look, I understand NPR is nothing short of a liberal advocacy group. I understand they don't get the distinction between the editorial page and news reporting. I understand we're dealing with an organization which feels truth and fact itself is biased, and needs to be corrected with spin, and that their audience can't handle the truth (a'la Nicholson). All this I can understand. Lamentable, yes. (I'd hope for more from them, but you know, you can't have liberal broadcasters earning my respect, now, can we?)

But I do object to paying for such with public monies.