Note: This BizzyBlog tradition will be Friday’s last post.

Note: This post originally appeared at Pajamas Media on Wednesday morning.

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The President and Congress wage war on poor smokers while relying on their taxes.

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It was not an April Fool’s Day stunt, and it wasn’t funny.

On April 1, tobacco taxes went up — way up. The most visible increases were the roughly 160% hikes in the federal excise tax on cigarettes to $1.01 per pack from 39 cents, and chewing tobacco to 50 cents per pound from 19.5 cents.

The least visible increase was the most revealing one, because it showed just how far the government will go in search of tax revenue while protecting the very people it demonizes for public consumption.

You see, as state and federal tobacco taxes have risen over the years, more and more smokers have taken to rolling their own cigarettes and cigars. This of course requires purchasing the raw material. Until March 31, the tax on a pound of tobacco was $1.09. According to this retail source, you can get up to 600 cigarettes, or up to 30 packs, out of a pound.

You can see the “problem”: $1.09 is a lot less money for Uncle Sam than the up to $11.70 (30 packs times $0.39) he was extracting from regular smokers before April 1. I have little doubt that many inside the halls of government, probably with the helpful assistance of cigarette makers moaning about “unfair” competition, were characterizing the roll-your-own smokers (RYOs) as “freeloaders.”

So Congress and the President fixed that “unfair” situation by raising the per-pound tax on tobacco purchases from $1.09 to $24.78.

You read that right. That’s a mind-numbing 2173% tax increase. Now the federal tax on the raw material is pretty close to the federal tax charged on cigarettes at retail, which, equivalently stated, is now up to $30.30 (30 packs times $1.01).

In government-think, this was done, I suspect, to force the RYOs to pay “their fair share.” It shouldn’t surprise anyone if many states follow suit and impose their own per-pound tobacco tax increases.

Though they will never publicly admit it, Congress imposed this radical tax increase on RYOs to protect Big Tobacco, the tax cash cow they love to hate, but can’t live without. It’s as clear an illustration as you’ll ever see of how government all too often operates at cross-purposes. On the one hand, it uses Big Tobacco as a whipping boy every time a study comes out showing some new harm or cost imposed by smoking and smokers. On the other hand, the government knows that if enough people ever stop smoking, or figure out how to get their nicotine fixes without going through Big Tobacco, tax receipts will dive.

The latest round of federal tobacco tax increases is supposed to fund the expansion of SCHIP, the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. There is no defensible reason, other than sheer vindictiveness, why a small minority of the population, the roughly one in five adults who smoke, should, as is supposedly the intent, pay for the entire multibillion-dollar cost that was added to the program earlier this year.

(I say “supposedly” because many analysts, including Heritage, have concluded that the population of smokers would have to increase dramatically for the tax increases to fully fund SCHIP expansion. That clearly won’t happen, and will set the stage for raiding “general revenues,” as if there really are any available, in the future.)

On top of all of that, the tobacco tax increases collectively represent about the most regressive tax imaginable.

Even if the prevalence of smoking in lower- and upper-income groups were the same, these taxes would represent a fixed cost slapped on everyone, including the poorest among us. But it’s worse than that, because smoking is more prevalent in lower-income groups. Last Wednesday, Gallup reported that the tobacco tax increases are “nearly three times as likely to affect low-income Americans as …. high-income Americans. That’s because 34% of the lowest-income Americans smoke, compared with only 13% of those earning $90,000 or more per year.” Since there is no reason to believe that RYOs are any more or less prevalent among various income groups than smokers in general, the 2173% tax increase on raw tobacco purchases will hit affected lower-income RYO households even harder.

Yes, smokers can quit. Without doubt, many will. But the government can’t afford for everyone to quit. More importantly, it knows that most won’t.

In addition to being yet another clear case of theft from one group to benefit another — adult smokers will pay for the health care of mostly other people’s children — the tobacco tax increases represent a broken Obama campaign promise.

Candidate Obama said that 95% of Americans would have their taxes cut during his administration. The only way that could be the case is if every family with a household income under $250,000 a year with one or more smokers is able to get tax freebies from the Obama grab bag exceeding the additional tobacco taxes they will pay. Every pack-a-day smoker who will be paying $226 more in cigarette taxes per year (365 x $0.62) would have to get an offsetting benefit from somewhere else. One problem is that many of Obama’s tax breaks phase out at incomes far below $250,000. But beyond that, a large plurality of taxpayers currently pays no federal tax. The only way to claim that these people are getting a “tax cut” offsetting the tobacco tax increases is to twist the definition of “tax cut” to include “government grants to non-taxpayers.” Further, even if you accept that nutty definitional extension, the New York Times reported on March 25 that “(neither) the House and Senate (budget) plans …. would extend a middle-class tax cut championed by Mr. Obama beyond 2010 unless a source of revenue to pay for it is identified.”

So at best, it appears that Obama’s middle-class “cuts” will give households a one-year break. But the painfully regressive tobacco tax increases will go on, and on, and on.

How Obama and his party retain their “friends of the little guy” status remains a mystery.

Noon Update: This post has been revised from how it appeared earlier this morning to conform with NewsBusters’ excerpting and style standards.

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As was usually the case during Bill Clinton’s presidency, the ascendancy of Dear Leader Barack Obama means that we will often have to consult the output of center-right commentators, and of course the Media Research Center and its affiliates, to cut through the establishment media’s puffery to pick up even the most basic pieces of news.

Charles Krauthammer’s column today on the results of Obama’s just-completed European Adventure is one such raw news source.

I have bolded items in the excerpt below that represent news that was either not reported or vastly under-reported by what’s left of the establishement media (there are even more examples at his full column):

In his major foreign policy address in Prague committing the United States to a world without nuclear weapons, President Obama took note of North Korea’s missile launch just hours earlier and then grandiloquently proclaimed:

“Rules must be binding. Violations must be punished. Words must mean something. The world must stand together to prevent the spread of these weapons. Now is the time for a strong international response.”

A more fatuous presidential call to arms is hard to conceive. What “strong international response” did Obama muster to North Korea’s brazen defiance of a Chapter 7 –”binding,” as it were — U.N. resolution prohibiting such a launch?

The obligatory emergency Security Council session produced nothing. No sanctions. No resolution. Not even a statement. China and Russia professed to find no violation whatsoever. They would not even permit a U.N. statement that dared express “concern,” let alone condemnation.

Having thus bravely rallied the international community and summoned the U.N. — a fiction and a farce, respectively — what was Obama’s further response? The very next day, his defense secretary announced drastic cuts in missile defense, including halting further deployment of Alaska-based interceptors designed precisely to shoot down North Korean ICBMs. Such is the “realism” Obama promised to restore to U.S. foreign policy.

….. He wanted more NATO combat troops in Afghanistan to match the surge of 17,000 Americans. He was rudely rebuffed.

He wanted more stimulus spending from Europe. He got nothing.

From Russia, he got no help on Iran. From China, he got the blocking of any action on North Korea.

And what did he get for Guantanamo? France, pop. 64 million, will take one prisoner. One!

The bolded items have generally been reported in at best vague terms, if at all, while the media horde has almost unanimously declared Obama’s European Adventure an unqualified success. The reality is quite the opposite — The specifics Krauthammer notes make it clear that President ‘Prompter is courting danger (Obama may not think so, but history says he is) and failing to defend our interests, up to and including survival as a nation.

Although Rush is right when he points out that his popularity has generally climbed regardless of who is in office, there’s little doubt that center-right talk radio is also helping to fill in the information void the establishment media is creating, seemingly deliberately, around Dear Leader. There are also of course the center-right blogs that are around now to pick up the slack.

We shouldn’t have to work so hard just to get the basics, but like it or not, it’s the reality.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

From Channahon, Illinois:

Thursday, April 9, 2009 6:50 PM CDT

The village board this week honored several Channahon police officers in the wake of two incidents during the past year.

Officers Michael Lazzari and Brad Bucciarelli were recognized for their actions that ended in the rescue of a retired police officer who had driven into a frigid river during an accident.

The officers got the call on Jan. 23. A driver had just gone off the road and into the river by Harborside Marina in Channahon.

A civilian happened to be riding along with the officers that day. Michael Boyle was interested in becoming a police officer and said he wanted to experience the job first-hand.

Another Channahon officer, Detective. Kevin McRaven, had been listening to the radio calls on his day off and decided he would drive to the scene also to see if he could lend a hand.

The fire department was on the way and would be the agency that rescued the man from the river, but the officers prepared the area for the fire department’s arrival so they could quickly get to and in the water and do the rescue.

After the driver was rescued, even Boyle had a hand in the job by helping carry him to the ambulance.

The driver survived, and, according to Channahon Chief of Police Joe Pena, the Channahon officers played a major part in his survival.

“With the frigid water,” Pena told the board, “the timeliness of the rescue was everything. And as usual, our guys stepped up. The gentlemen survived the ordeal due to their efforts.”

The second incident involved a stalker, a knife, and a two-hour suicide stand-off.

Sergeant Jim Pozen, Detectives Adam Bogart and Kevin McRaven, and officer Mike Yokum went to a Channahon residence after a call of a domestic dispute involving a man allegedly stalking his ex-girlfriend.

When they arrived, they found an unexpected scene. The man, Pozen said, was sitting on the curb with a knife to his own throat.

When the officers went up to him, he threatened suicide. There were people around, including children, and the officers secured the area and created a contained perimeter around him, then spent more than two hours talking to him and trying to convince him to put the knife down.

He finally did.

Pena said the officers showed the highest caliber of professionalism. The chief and village attorney Dave Silverman nominated the officers for a certificate of merit from the Illinois State Bar Association, and they received the award Monday. ….

Go here for the rest of the story.

Reuters is only the latest wire service to go way over the top in taking pity on President Obama for having to deal with nasty things that intervene to disturb Dear Leader’s apparent solitude.

At the same time, Reuters seems to be characterizing the situations in Iran and North Korea as “distractions” that are equivalent to that being posed by the Somali pirates.

I don’t know how else you can interpret the way this Reuters article by Steven Holland currently appears:

This is far from the first time a wire service has sympathized with the poor man being “distracted.” In an early January post (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), I cited four examples within the previous 30 days of events framed as “distractions” by the establishment media. Two of them related to developments in the Rod Blagojevich scandal that ultimately led to the Illinois governor’s removal from office; one had to do with Bill Richardson’s withdrawal as Secretary of Commerce nominee; and the fourth related to the ongoing controversies over the US Senate seats in Illinois and Minnesota.

According to this Google News search, The words “Obama” and “distraction” have both appeared in 2,425 articles in just the past 30 days; excluding duplicates, it’s about 450. Of course, all of them don’t necessarily tie in to the administration’s current activities, but a quick cruise through the results shows that at least the following items are potentially or actually distracting President ‘Prompter and/or his administration:

• Any debate over the trade embargo with Cuba.
• The bid to renew the Clinton Era’s assault weapons ban.
• The Korean rocket incident.
• The war in Afghanistan (as seen through the eyes of Europeans).
• The AIG bonuses (according to Rahm Emanuel).

By contrast, this final page of a Google News archive search from January 20, 2005 through November 1, 2008 shows that “Bush” and “distraction” appeared together in 809 articles in almost four years. Comparability between the two metrics isn’t perfect, but I sympathize with anyone who finds that the press’s obsession with the supposed distractions the White House’s current occupant faces is driving them to, well, distraction.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

That Joe Biden and the truth have been distant acquaintances from time to time was recently seen in March (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog) when the Vice President claimed that Louisiana was losing 400 jobs a day. Louisiana at the time was actually gaining jobs.

The math-challenged Biden, who infamously said during the presidential campaign that the word “jobs” has three letters, is now making claims that he had face-to-face meetings with President Bush which aides and others don’t recall or have a record of. Not surprisingly, Biden’s narrative concerning these alleged meetings is meant to demonstrate what an influential truth-to-power guy he is.

Gag me.

Bill Sammon of Fox News has the story, which is a virtual lock not to make it into the established alphabet TV networks or into what’s left of the establishment’s newspapers:

Bush Aides Challenge Biden’s Boasts of Oval Office Slapdowns
Aides to former President George W. Bush are challenging the veracity of Vice President Joe Biden’s claim this week of having privately castigated Bush.

Aides to former President George W. Bush are challenging the veracity of Vice President Joe Biden’s claim this week of having privately castigated Bush, who does not remember the incident or an earlier episode in which Biden claims to have similarly rebuked Bush.

Biden spokesman Jay Carney declined to specify the dates of his boss’s purported Oval Office scoldings of Bush. Nor would he provide witnesses or notes to corroborate the episodes.

“The vice president stands by his remarks,” Carney told FOX News without elaboration.

Those remarks include a shot that Biden took at Bush on Tuesday.

“I remember President Bush saying to me one time in the Oval Office,” Biden told CNN, “‘Well, Joe,’ he said, ‘I’m a leader.’ And I said: ‘Mr. President, turn and around look behind you. No one is following.’”

That exchange never took place, according to numerous Bush aides who also dispute a similar assertion by Biden in 2004, when the former senator from Delaware told scores of Democratic colleagues that he had challenged Bush’s moral certitude about the Iraq war during a private meeting in the Oval Office. Two years later, Biden repeated his story about dressing down the president.

“When I speak to the president – and I have had plenty of opportunity to be with the president, at least prior to the last election, a lot of hours alone with him. I mean, meaning me and his staff,” Biden said on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” in April 2006. “And the president will say things to me, and I’ll literally turn to the president, say: ‘Mr. President, how can you say that, knowing you don’t know the facts?’ And he’ll look at me and he’ll say – my word – he’ll look at me and he’ll say: ‘My instincts.’ He said: ‘I have good instincts.’ I said: ‘Mr. President, your instincts aren’t good enough.’”

Bush aides now dispute the veracity of both assertions by Biden.

“I never recall Biden saying any of that,” former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said after reviewing detailed notes of Bush’s White House meetings with Biden, which include numerous direct quotes from Biden. “I find it odd that he said he met with him alone all the time. I don’t think that’s true.”

I think the giveaway that Biden is making it up is the claim that he met with Bush alone “all the time.”

If these or other Bush-Biden meetings occurred, the press seems to never have noticed. The following isn’t conclusive, but it surely doesn’t help Biden. Google News Archive all-dates searches (all in quotes) on “Biden meets with Bush,” “Biden met with Bush,” “Biden speaks with Bush,” “Biden spoke with Bush” and “Biden addresses Bush” all come up empty. Similarly, nothing comes back for “Bush meets with Biden,” “Bush met with Biden,” “Bush spoke with Biden,” “Bush speaks with Biden,” “Bush addresses Biden,” “Bush and Biden met,” or “Biden and Bush met.”

By contrast, I was able to find one hit each for “Kennedy and Bush met” and “Bush and Kennedy met.”

I for one won’t be surprised if I someday find Biden’s picture next to the description of this term.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

Noteworthy Net-Worthies:

“Open Blog” at Ace’s place suggests quitting smoking as a way of going Galt on SCHIP.

Last week at the Wall Street Journal, David Rivkin and Lee Casey made a strong case arguing that “card check” legislation that would short-circuit secret-ballot elections in union organizing situations is unconstitutional. It’s also a stark betrayal of one of FDR’s core legacies by the people who supposedly admire him. Previous BizzyBlog commentary is here, here, and here.

Repeating a point from March 5′s Lucid Links about Mike Quigley, who won the special election yesterday for Rahm Emanuel’s former Chicagoland congressional seat — “Mike Quigley, the out-of-nowhere (primary) winner, who is almost assured of a general-election triumph, not only defeated union-favored candidates, he is also a de facto Tea Party sympathizer. He ‘fought the Old Guard on the (Cook) County Board and built an opposition bloc that voted down tax increases.’ He is also not in good graces with Mayor Dictator for Life Daley. Apparently voters saw that as a good thing.” I don’t think Democrat Quigley will be an Obama rubber stamp, as Chicago’s North Side has a lot well-off folks who would get stung badly by Obama’s tax increases just as their high-rise condo values have gone in the tank.

Cuba has just undergone an old-fashioned, control-centralizing Communist purge. That hasn’t prevented a delegation of Congressional Black Caucus congresspersons, including Ohio’s Marcia Fudge, from providing the island dictatorship propaganda cover. Fudge fudged on the nation’s horrid human rights record, saying that “You don’t go into someone’s house and insult them.” Well, you also don’t let yourself get used by a 50-year family tyranny — unless human rights really aren’t that important to you.

NOT a Positivity story, from March 30 — “Authorities in an impoverished Palestinian refugee camp have shut down a youth orchestra, boarded up its rehearsal studio and banned its conductor from the camp after she took 13 young musicians to perform for Holocaust survivors in Israel, an official said Sunday.” That’ll teach ‘em to do something nice.

Procter & Gamble is not happy with one of Obama’s tax proposals. “U.S. companies now are allowed to defer payment of taxes on foreign income until those funds are brought back into the country. Requiring immediate payment of taxes would give an edge to foreign competitors, such as L’Oreal, Unilever, Nestle and Kao, (P&G Chairman) Lafley said.” In essence, Obama wants companies like P&G to pay taxes on money not yet received. It may be sacrilege to say this in Cincinnati, but P&G does not have to be headquartered in the US. Further, if you think P&G sees itself as a US company selling to the rest of the world, you are sadly mistaken. For better or worse, it thinks of itself as a multinational company that happens to have the US as its headquarters.

Hmm — On March 30, Rasmussen reported a poll result claiming that “81% Say Middle Class Tax Cuts (Are) Important for Budget Plan.” One problem: the cuts apparently aren’t in congressional drafts of the budget plan. Look for this to be one of the most invisible stories of the year.

In Ohio and much of the rest of the nation, the healthcare sector has been about the only one that has seen job growth during the POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) Economy that dates back to June of last year. So how does Ohio Governor Ted Strickland handle it? He wants a hospital “franchise tax.” A Cleveland Plain Dealer editorial calls it “Strickland’s sneaky tax,” describing it as “a ‘franchise fee’ of 1.27 percent in 2009 and 1.37 percent in 2010 levied not on each hospital’s income, but on its spending.“ It’s a rough healthcare equivalent of Ohio’s awful Commercial Activities Tax, but on steroids. Now, many Greater Cincinnati hospitals “are delaying capital projects. …. laying off employees or freezing hiring.” I don’t think that is an unrelated development. Given that the Ohio Legislature’s resistance to Strickland’s 2009-2011 budget seems to be mostly procedural and not substance-based, and given that it waved Strickland’s 2007-2009 budget through without a fight, you can’t blame hospitals for bracing for the worst.

From Sheffield, UK:

Published Date: 03 April 2009

A SLEEPING Sheffield woman’s life was saved today when she was woken by her smoke alarm after a blaze broke out in a block of flats.
Residents had to flee their homes as the blaze engulfed the top-floor landing of the block of four maisonettes on Delves Road, Hackenthorpe, at 1.10am as they slept.

Firefighters said when they arrived flames were shooting out of the landing window on the top floor and glass was shattering and falling to the ground.

All the residents managed to get out unhurt and an investigation has been launched this morning into the cause of the fire.

The woman whose flat was worst affected by the blaze woke up to find her home filling with smoke and the store cupboard outside alight.

Second after she got out of the building the heat became so intense it melted the smoke alarm which had alerted her to the blaze.

Watch manager Andrew Kelly, from Mansfield Road fire station, said: “The alarm saved her life by giving her the time to get out before the fire spread.

Go here for the rest of the story.

…. with rare exceptions for absentees:

A Wisconsin man has acknowledged that he illegally cast an absentee ballot for Barack Obama in his wife’s name to fulfill her dying wish.

Stephen Wroblewski (roe-BLESS-key) of Milwaukee said Wednesday he plans to plead guilty to voter fraud to end the embarrassing episode.

He says he contacted prosecutors the day after the fall election after learning that the ballot he cast for his wife was being challenged.

How many similar votes aren’t ever challenged? Answer, based on this November 2006 story from Cuyahoga County in Ohio, I’d say “quite a few more than 27.”

It’s here. Go there to to see what the specific, for-real 2173% tax increase is.

The column will go up Friday morning here at BizzyBlog (link won’t work until then) after the blackout expires.

One of early commenters at PJM said this in part about the significance of the various tobacco-related tax increases:

“Not one thin dime.” Isn’t that what the Pres said about raising taxes on 95% of Americans? I don’t make anywhere near $250k and somehow, unexplainably, I feel like I’m paying more taxes… Hmm. This is very disturbing. A carton of smokes (not even the premium ones) went from $28 to $34 the other day. I wonder if I could save up all the packs I smoke in a year, send them to the gubmint and get a tax refund or something. Just to keep Obama from lying to me, you know.

I couldn’t find the “one thin dime” part, but I definitely found the 95% reference in Obama’s August Greco-Roman nomination acceptance speech in Denver:

I will — listen now — I will cut taxes — cut taxes — for 95 percent of all working families, because, in an economy like this, the last thing we should do is raise taxes on the middle class.

“Listen now,” because Obama’s direct promise has been proven, like Bill Clinton’s infamous disappearing middle-class tax cut in 1993 (which instead turned into a massive tax increase that held the economy back from what it could have been for the next several years), to be a direct betrayal:

• First and most obvious, even without the points that follow, the tobacco-related tax increases ARE taxes (Obama didn’t say “income taxes,” did he?). Obama’s sentences-earlier reference in his speech to the “tax code” doesn’t get him off the hook, because tobacco taxes are part of the Internal Revenue Code. Tobacco-related taxes also, as the column points out, disproportionately affect those with middle and lower incomes.
• Second, Obama and his fellow POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) Economy architects have, from all indications, thrown permanent middle-class “tax cuts” under the bus. The New York Times reported on March 25 that “[neither] the House [nor] Senate [budget] plans … would extend a middle-class tax cut championed by Mr. Obama beyond 2010 unless a source of revenue to pay for it is identified.” That’s Times-speak for “it looks like they’re only going to last a year, and then it’s bye-bye.”
• Many of the “tax cuts” should be characterized as “giveaways” anyway, because in a large plurality of cases they will represent amounts paid to households who are paying no federal income tax in the first place.

This nonchalant betrayal partially explains why Tea Parties across the nation, far from being elitist, are attracting Americans from all walks of life.

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RELATED: Today’s column at Townhall by Walter Williams gets to material I had to leave on the cutting-room floor in the interest of space (paragraph breaks added by me; bold is mine) –

Most Americans accept the continuing attack on tobacco companies and smokers, but how do they feel about the massive government deception?

In 1998, 46 state attorneys general and major tobacco companies signed the Master Settlement Agreement. The major tobacco companies agreed, among other things, to give states $240 billion over 25 years to provide for smoking cessation programs and cover the health costs associated with using their product. In return state attorneys general promised tobacco companies that they wouldn’t sue them and would use their lawmaking power to protect the major tobacco companies from competition from small tobacco companies.

Of the $80 billion extorted so far, states have spent about 30 percent on health, not all tobacco-related, and less than 6 percent on smoking cessation programs. Instead, state legislatures spent the bulk of their tobacco money for items such as museum building, tax relief, rainy-day funds and other expenditures having nothing to do with tobacco or health.

In case you haven’t gone to the PJM column to see what the 2173% tax increase is — when you do, you’ll find that it has to do with “protect(ing) the major tobacco companies.”

From Sunriver, Oregon:

How a Sunriver man saved a dear friend with CPR
Published: April 06, 2009 4:00AM PST

For Dave Lewis, March 12 started out like any other day.

The Sunriver man went to his job as a mortgage consultant at Bank of Oregon, and headed home a little early to get in some quality time outdoors with his boxers, Sophie, 2, and Bailey, 10.

Lewis and his dogs have a favorite trail, which runs from the northern edge of Sunriver toward Benham Falls.

“We try to get out where nobody’s around,” he said in a telephone interview last week. “It was a gorgeous day down by the river.”

The trip out from the car takes 30 to 45 minutes, Lewis said, and Sophie “runs circles around (Bailey), and he, of course, tries to keep up.”

On this particular day, the group had just started to head back toward home when Sophie ran by her owner, and Lewis noticed Bailey was nowhere to be seen.

“I turned around and he was just stretched out in the snow about 25 or 30 yards behind me, just flat on the ground,” he said. “I didn’t know whether (Sophie) had run into him or not, because she’ll do that sometimes — just take a run at him and flatten him.”

Lewis went running back to his older dog, where he quickly realized Bailey hadn’t been felled by Sophie.

“I worked as a medic back in college and have been involved in multiple CPRs and all kinds of things,” he said. “Bailey’s gums were white, his tongue was out, eyes were fixed and dilated, no respirations, and his bowels had evacuated.

“Every signal you could look at (indicated) this dog’s heart has stopped. He’s just done. He’s just gone.”

Bailey had lived with Lewis and his wife, Linda, since he was a puppy, and he’s one of several boxers they’ve had over the years. And as Lewis considered his next move, he very briefly wondered if he should even try to help his four-legged buddy.

“I shook him a little bit, and I thought for a moment,” he said. “We’ve had to put four boxers down because they never die in their sleep, and it’s horrible to go through that, so I thought, ‘Well, maybe I don’t do anything and it’s over, and the last thing you remember is he was running in the sun by the river.’”

But that thought didn’t last long. Lewis’ background as a first responder kicked in, and he began life-saving measures. ….

Go here for the rest of the story.

The Associated Press’s determination to keep the identity of Democrats in trouble or under investigation hidden is indeed strong and persistent.

Its report (as of 11:03 p.m.; a copy is saved here at my web host for future reference) on the launch of an ethics probe into Democrat Jesse Jackson Jr.’s relationship with ousted former Democratic Governor Rod Blagojevich, particularly relating to Jackson’s bid to be appointed to the Senate seat left vacant by President Barack Obama, does not refer to Jackson or Blago as a Democrat. Any more, that’s relatively unremarkable.

What is a bit more remarkable is that the underlying Chicago Sun-Times story on the impending probe refers to Jackson twice as a “D-Ill,” once in the report’s very first sentence and once in the picture caption copied at the top right (which, of all things, is apparently an AP file photo).

This means that AP had to proactively scrub the Democratic Party references already present in its underlying source.

Here’s how the Sun-Times’s story began:

Ethics board launches probe into Rep Jesse Jackson Jr.

A congressional ethics board has launched a preliminary inquiry into U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill), related to President Obama’s vacant Senate seat and the corruption investigation of ousted Gov. Rod Blagojevich, the Chicago Sun-Times has learned.

The Office of Congressional Ethics, formed just last year, voted in late March to conduct a “preliminary review,” of actions surrounding Jackson’s bid to be appointed to the Senate seat, according to documents released to parties involved in the probe. The committee launched the action Thursday — the same day Blagojevich was indicted on corruption charges.

The panel has asked parties in the Blagojevich case — including his former gubernatorial staff and campaign staff — to turn over any documents, emails, or other correspondence involving Jackson Jr. and his campaign staff, Jackson’s brother, Jonathan, and political fund-raisers Raghuveer Nayak and Rajinder Bedi, lawyers close to the probe told the Sun-Times. The request for information is from June of last year through Dec. 31, 2008.

Here’s how the AP story began:

Report: Jesse Jackson Jr. faces ethics probe

An independent panel that reviews possible ethical lapses by members of the House of Representatives has launched a preliminary review of U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr.’s efforts to be appointed to the U.S. Senate by ousted Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, according to a published report.

The Office of Congressional Ethics voted in late March for the review, the Chicago Sun-Times reported in a story posted Tuesday on its Web site, citing documents released to parties involved in the inquiry.

The committee has asked for documents, e-mails and other correspondence from Blagojevich’s gubernatorial and campaign staff regarding Jackson, Jackson’s brother Jonathan and his campaign staff, the Sun-Times reported, citing lawyers close to the probe. It requested information from June through December 2008.

It would appear that the writer of the wire service’s unbylined story ignored its own Stylebook (from 2000), which reads as follows:

party affiliation Let relevance be the guide in determining whether to include a political figure’s party affiliation in a story. Party affiliation is pointless in some stories, such as an account of a governor accepting a button from a poster child. It will occur naturally in many political stories. For stories between these extremes, include party affiliation if readers need it for understanding or are likely to be curious about what it is.

The idea that relatively disengaged readers outside of Illinois don’t need to know the party ID of Jackson is absurd on its face. The Sun-Times clearly thought that its mostly local readership needed a party-ID reminder, yet AP ridiculously decided that its more national audience somehow did not.

It would seem that the goal of minimizing the results of future searches on “Democratic” and “corruption” or “D-Ill” and “corruption” is more important than the AP following its own Stylebook.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.