The American Spectator

Has Bob Schieffer done it again?

CBS Face the Nation host Schieffer is in the news for interviewing Attorney General Eric Holder and 1) completely misstating the Arizona immigration law (he said it allowed Arizonans to be stopped because of their race, which is flatly not true) and 2) asking nothing at all about the Black Panther voter intimidation case. The latter, of course, involves Holder’s own Justice Department and the accusation by a resigned DOJ attorney that Justice deliberately refused to investigate the Panthers because they were black. The case is being actively investigated by the U.S. Civil Rights Commission.

Schieffer was called heatedly to account last night on both stories by Fox’s Bill O’Reilly.

This is not the first time Schieffer has found himself on the end of a liberal bias accusation in terms of his reporting — or lack thereof.

As the John Edwards sex scandal was beginning to get some traction in the 2008 presidential campaign, with Edwards out there as a still viable candidate as an Obama running mate or Attorney General, Schieffer appeared on Imus in the Morning, the Don Imus radio show.

Asked by Imus whether CBS would be looking into the possibility that Edwards was lying and in fact really had an affair with videographer Rielle Hunter, as the National Enquirer and the Internet were then reporting, Schieffer replied:

Well, you know I saw that this morning. I believe that — I believe that’s a story that we will be avoiding, because it appears to me that there’s absolutely nothing to it. I’m told that another — a man says that the child is his. I’m told that the woman who seems to be pregnant says it’s not his. So I guess — I guess we’re going to pass on that. Unless you come up with some new information on this, Don. 

Schieffer also said: 

This seems to be just sort of a staple of modern campaigns, that you got through at least one love child which turns out not to be a love child. And I think we can all do better than this one.

Investigations by others — the New Media — finally got at the truth. The baby was indeed John Edwards love-child. Edwards aide Andrew Young, who has now written a tell-all book, was the “another man” Schieffer referenced and admits the story Schieffer swallowed whole was a lie. So too were the denials by “the woman who seems to be pregnant” (catch that — seems — not is) untrue. John Edwards, once a darling of the liberal media, has seen his career implode along with his marriage.

But if it were left to Bob Schieffer, John Edwards today might be vice president or attorney general. And if it were the latter, we know Schieffer would still not be asking the tough questions.

Yet again, whether neglecting to question Eric Holder about a major voting rights scandal in his own department, getting a major fact about the Arizona law completely wrong — or accepting at face value a story made up out of whole cloth by the Edwards people, a story that finally turned out to be a quite vivid series of outright lies — one has to wonder whether, after all this time, Bob Schieffer is in the right business. Or even wants to do his job in any serious fashion.

Liberal bias rides again.

Which is why Fox — and Bill O’Reilly, Bernard Goldberg and Brit Hume, all of whom discussed Schieffer last night — thrive.