But Even the Washington Post

Robert Siegel's interview with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi offers a peak into NPR's ideological baseline (with an emphasis on base!). Siegel has this to say to Pelosi: "You have been criticized not just by President Bush and Vice President Cheney for this trip, but even the Washington Post editorial page devotes an editorial called 'Pratfall in Damascus' about your visit and talks with President Assad."

Only someone who's idea of legitimate political discourse is so extremely narrow and constricted would make such a nonexistent contrast between the WaPo's editorial pages and the Bush-Cheney ideology. A quick look on Common Dreams turns up several reports on the Bush-infiltrated, pro-war bias of the WaPo editorial page (not to be confused with some of it's actual reporting which can be pretty good at times.) If you can bear to look at the actual "Pratfall in Damascus" editorial, you'll see that it might as well have been written by a Bush-Cheney speech writer as these excerpts reveal:
"As any diplomat with knowledge of the region could have told Ms. Pelosi, Mr. Assad is a corrupt thug whose overriding priority at the moment is not peace with Israel..."
"...the attempt by a Democratic congressional leader to substitute her own foreign policy for that of a sitting Republican president."
"Ms. Pelosi rammed legislation through the House of Representatives that would strip Mr. Bush of his authority as commander in chief to manage troop movements in Iraq."

If you doubt that Siegel has an ideological bias favoring US (and Israeli) imperial dominance in the Middle East (as opposed to compromise and justice) consider the following grotesque statements made by Speaker Pelosi that went completely unchallenged:

• "...we are interested in peace in the Middle East, with Israel, to go to Damascus and say to President Assad the same message that President Bush has for him....there is no division in our views..."
• "The message that we carried from Prime Minister Olmert was the exact message that he gave us, he is a man of peace..."
• "...what we went to the Middle East was to convey a message of where we are in agreement with the President…what we stand together on."

If ever Pelosi deserved criticism, it is for these assertions, but they square nicely with the ideology of NPR so she gets a pass--and if this is the best that the leader of the "opposition: party in the House can offer, we are in some seriously deep doo-doo.