Washington Times:

Forget media bias. That’s just slanting the news. The liberal press judges stories before investigating them. That’s prejudice, which sums up how the anti-tax tea parties were covered this week.

Marc Cooper compared tax protesters to glue-sniffing lunatics in the Los Angeles Times. “Whip out your Lipton and don your tinfoil hat and join the protest against … against … against what exactly?”, he ranted. MSNBC talking heads Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow and Chris Matthews dismissed the protesters as crackpots or stooges doing the bidding of GOP Svengalis.

MRC:

An offended Chris Matthews, on Thursday night’s Hardball, was so shocked by Sarah Palin’s claim that there wasn’t anybody to pray with on the McCain campaign, that he hurled multiple insults Palin’s way, calling her “a little scary,” and asked if Palin thought McCain was “the Anti-Christ?” Matthews was appalled by Palin’s recent revelation that she had trouble finding someone to pray with before her vice presidential debate and the MSNBC host worried such talk about “The Deity in a political environment” wasn’t “normal.”

MRC:

What’s with Chris Matthews’ fixation with comparing Republicans to trolls? Back in September he called then-presidential candidate John McCain “troll-like” after one of his debate performances, and then over the weekend, on the syndicated Chris Matthews Show, he applied the monstrous term to Republicans in the following intro to his show: “And finally trolls under the bridge. Is that what Washington Republicans have become? Gremlins hiding along the pathway, nipping at the Democrats. And are Republican governors saying, ‘That’s not my job.’”

[This item, by the MRC's Geoffrey Dickens, was posted Monday morning on the MRC's blog, NewsBusters.org: newsbusters.org ]

A little later, going to a break, Matthews teased the upcoming segment with video of Rush Limbaugh, with an on-screen headline reading: “Trolls Under The Bridge.”

MATTHEWS: Anyway when we come back Rush Limbaugh wants Barack Obama to fail. He’s honest about it. Are Republicans letting Limbaugh speak for them?

At the opening of the segment Matthews drew guffaws from guest panelist Norah O’Donnell of NBC when he mocked Limbaugh again: