If you can’t see the distinction between someone shilling for their significant other and someone with a political position covering an election, your judgement is the one in question.

And Paul Begala, liberal shill that he is, isn’t a news anchor. His biases are well known and even encouraged on most of the venues he frequents.

And even the Mapes comment is off base. It may be true that many people at CBS have a political axe to grind that may cause them to cover anti-Bush stories more than not. But it wasn’t her political views as much as her lack of professionalism in this instance that got her in trouble.

It would certainly be better, in my opinion, if the political leanings of reporters and producers of the news were known and published. But that is quite different than saying people with political positions should be excluded.

It would be innappropriate for Maria Shriver to cover Arnie or for Kagan, if the gossip is correct, to cover Rush. But Begala can talk about Republicans just like Rush can calk about liberals.

Rush on drug addicts might even be interesting.

There are many reporters who have an emotional stake in the outcome of this election that comes pretty close to whatever emotions Kagan might have for Limbaugh…. or Shriver has for Arnie.

So if it’s good policy to keep Kagan and Shriver off their loved ones, it should be policy to keep their other staff off their loved ones…whether it’s keeping the the liberal reporter off covering Kerry (although to be fair, you can’t have a conservative covering Kerry either), keeping the pro-abortion reporter from covering the abortion wars or so on.

Otherwise, the media is being inconsistent. And I argue, inconsistency in this case is evidence of bias.

I’m arguing that having an opinion is the definition of bias. I don’t want to restrict reporters to only those people too disinterested, too ignorant, or too stupid to form an opinion on a subject that they are covering.

But you ignored my first point which was that anchors like Kagan have to meet a much different standard than a pundit like Begala. Begala is asked to comment exactly because he is biased and partisan.

You also are explicitly equating support for a candidate in a political dog fight with the emotional and psychological bond of a more intimate relationship. I think there is an great different between those two types of bias in both quality and degree.