The other talk show NPR publicists touted was "Tell Me More," hosted by Michel Martin, a former reporter for ABC. Martin recently told NPR listeners she is far too similar to Michelle Obama to feel objectively about her, and she thinks Rush Limbaugh is racist, and explains thusly: "Some people hate the federal government because they can't get past the fact that the government switched sides from being a weapon in the violent oppression of black and sometimes brown people, to being one of the tools creating opportunity for them, as well as other people."

NPR regularly airs liberal commentators (like former CBS reporter Daniel Schorr), and its idea of a conservative is David Brooks of the New York Times. A few weeks ago, in one of their regular evening political roundtables with liberal columnist E.J. Dionne, "All Things Considered" anchor Robert Siegel asked Brooks if he, as a moderate, was comfortable with Obama: "Are you getting more or less comfortable or more or less moderate?" Brooks replied candidly: "I'm getting less comfortable. I don't know about my gross ideological disposition these days."

Neither do conservatives, and yet Brooks is the man who's supposed to represent us.

Public broadcasting has been incredibly hostile to anyone who would dare to police it for fairness and balance. Conservatives ought not forget what happened to Kenneth Tomlinson, the former board chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Fur flew when liberals discovered Tomlinson had conducted a private study to determine if PBS and NPR shows tilted to the left. An inspector general's report suggested Tomlinson somehow had violated CPB bylaws, and he was forced to resign.

Liberal congressman John Dingell insisted Tomlinson had "inserted politics" into public broadcasting, and yes, feel free to insert a laugh track at this point.

It's only "inserting politics" when anyone bothers to object to the everyday liberal politics of NPR and PBS. Ever since Congress passed the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, the nation's taxpayer-funded news outlets have operated free of any real fear that someone would disturb their pattern of putting their big broadcasting thumb on the scale of liberalism.

If NPR's drawing a Limbaugh-sized audience, isn't it time someone started asking why a "Fairness Doctrine" shouldn't apply to them?