The mainstream media, who forgot Felix Frankfurter's admonition that "freedom of the press is not an end in itself but a means to the end of a free society," long ago abdicated their role as government watchdog and now require a watchdog themselves. Never has that been clearer than in the 2008 presidential election, during which they are covering up rather than covering Barack Obama's shady past and alliances, his knee-deep involvement in corrupt practices threatening the very core of our democratic system, and his many policy misrepresentations.

Consider some items the MSM would have explored if they were guardians of liberty instead of the Obama campaign.

--When Democrats insist every vote must count, do they also mean multiple votes from individuals and votes from dead and nonexistent people? If not, why aren't the MSM demanding answers about Obama's incestuous relationship with the criminal enterprise ACORN, whose serial crimes could alter the outcome of this election?

--How can the MSM allow ACORN's dissemblers to deflect the charge that they are seeking illegal votes with "these are registrations, not ballots," as if there is any purpose in procuring illegal registrations apart from maximizing illegal votes?

--The MSM preach that money in politics necessarily corrupts, so why do they ignore Obama's broken promise to accept public financing, his record-breaking campaign receipts, and the large number of untraceable contributions?

--Why do they dwell on VP candidate Sarah Palin's lack of foreign policy experience but ignore presidential candidate Obama's thinner experience?

--As champions of the "little guy" and privacy rights, why are they not outraged that the Obama campaign targeted, slandered and investigated Joe the Plumber by illegally using government computers merely for asking Obama one of the many questions they should have asked him?

--Why did they let Obama get away with falsely denying his culpability in opposing an Illinois bill that would have provided medical care to infants born despite failed abortion attempts?

--Why do they ignore what have now become real questions about Obama's birth certificate, when he could summarily end the speculation and win the lawsuit challenges on the merits rather than on technicalities simply by producing the document?

--Why are they completely incurious about the many gaps in Obama's past, including his years at Columbia and Harvard?

--How dare they accept Obama's insulting claim that he was unaware of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's anti-American, racist and blasphemous diatribes after attending his church for two decades and calling him his spiritual mentor?

--Other than being sympathetic to Marxism themselves, why don't they ask Obama about his mentor Frank Marshall Davis and his admitted Marxist influence on him or that of his "openly Marxist" mother? Why was he "drawn to" Marxists? Why did he seek them out? Why don't the MSM explore the logical connection between that background, his alliances with Marxist terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernadette Dohrn, and his advocacy of "spreading the wealth" today?

--Why don't they examine his self-description as a post-racial unifier against his autobiographical accounts of personal racial bitterness and his alliances with the Rev. Wright and Louis Farrakhan?

--Why do they conceal his complicity in Fannie and Freddie and his alliance with disgraced Fannie exec Franklin Raines?

--Why don't they demand the release of the videotape of his appearance at a 2003 dinner with Palestinian supporter Rashid Khalidi?

--Why don't they challenge his denial that he made a gross mistake in judgment in opposing the Iraq surge? It sure bothered them that George Bush couldn't admit a mistake.

--Why don't they ask him how he would immediately withdraw from Iraq regardless of the advice of commanders on the ground and the inevitable consequences, including forfeiture of our victory and our precious lives lost in combat?

--Why don't they ask him how he could possibly consider al-Qaida a threat if he thinks Iran is just a tiny country and not a threat?

--Why don't they wonder how he dares to mock the Holy Bible while he claims to be a devout Christian?

--Why do they give him a pass on his many duplicitous shifts of positions on the threshold income level for tax cuts from $300,000 to $250,000 to $200,000 to $150,000? How can they let him masquerade as a tax cutter and fiscal conservative when he has been the most liberal and tax-raising senator and his new spending easily would exceed $1 trillion? Does he support government control of our 401(k)s?

--Why did they affect hyperventilation over Sarah Palin's supposed wardrobe extravagance, which was merely a matter of projecting her best image, yet wholly ignore Obama's obscenely idolatrous million-dollar Greek coliseum mirage?

--And if he is really his brother's keeper, as Rush has noted, why can't he take care of his poverty-ridden brother and aunt, and why don't he and Joe Biden contribute more to charity?