Assaulting for Freedom?

The Washington Post reports today that hundreds of demonstrators from as far away as Chicago and Cleveland "stormed the small yard of President Bush's chief political strategist, Karl Rove . . . pounding on his windows, shoving signs at others and challenging Rove to talk to them about a bill that deals with educational opportunities for immigrants." It notes that "Rove obliged their first request and opened his door long enough to say, 'Get off my property.'" The group was advocating for DREAM, the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act, which the Post describes as "a bill that would permit immigrants who have lived in the United States for at least five years to apply for legal resident status once they graduate from high school. The measure would eliminate provisions of current federal law that discourage states from providing in-state tuition to undocumented student immigrants."

A sanctimonious tone sympathetic to the protestors and dismissive of Rove's legitimate worries at hundreds of trespassors banging on his windows pervades the piece, leaving one to wonder what the Post might have said had busloads of conservative activists swarmed the home of a liberal political aid. What's more, a friend reports that this story was omitted from the Post's daily "Headlines and Columnists" email even though it ran on page B1, the front page of the Metro Section. The question is whether the editors left the story out of the email because they were more embarrassed by the story's subject, which reveals the protestors to be thugs, or the overt political sympathies of the reporter, Steven Ginsberg.