Books Included for This Word Counting

Here was a rough-and- ready test of what America was reading, from a source hard to accuse of conservative bias.

And yet, of the 15 titles on the list, half a dozen were bluntly conservative polemics, and most of the rest were calculated to warm the cockles of a conservative's heart: biographies of various Founding Fathers, accounts of the Constitutional Convention, and the like.

For there's simply no doubt about it: The liberals have suddenly changed tactics and started pushing back at the conservatives with impressive ferocity.

To be sure, the conservatives are still well represented: "Who's Looking Out for You?" by Bill O'Reilly, the combative conservative commentator on the Fox News Channel, is No.

And "Shut Up and Sing" by Laura Ingraham, another conservative, which the Times describes as attacking "the 'elites' of Hollywood, Washington and New York," clocks in at No.

Of the entire list of 15 books, three are conservative brickbats, four are leftist or liberal, and two more are the self-serving memoirs of prominent Clintonians.

Time was -- and not so long ago, either -- when America's liberals chose simply to disregard the conservatives, as if they weren't there at all.

Why respond to conservative criticism, when doing so merely advertised its existence and implicitly conceded its significance?Far better to treat it as beneath even the grudging courtesy of contempt.

But nowadays, with talk radio firmly in conservative hands and pounding the daylights out of liberalism; with the Fox News Channel giving full and equal voice to conservative spokesmen and dominating TV news as a result; with publishing houses creating whole divisions to publish the conservative books that are now in demand -- the liberals have clearly decided they can't afford to give conservatism the silent treatment anymore.

Both CNN and MSNBC, trailing Fox in the cable-news ratings, attempted to put together Foxier lineups, with mixed results; MSNBC's hiring of conservative commentator Michael Savage ended badly after his reported viciousness to a caller.

Based on a script and an eight- minute promotional tape, conservatives howled that the movie was unfair.

HOLY MISUNDERSTANDING Birthplace of religion has deteriorated under Arafat Editor, The Times: Floyd McKay blames the decline of Christianity in Israel and the Palestinian territories on the Israelis, on American Christians (both liberal and conservative), and on the Bush administration ("Christianity in the Holy Land," Times guest commentary, Dec.

Which way will they go?A television commercial sponsored by a conservative anti-tax group in Iowa sums up the dilemma.

In each of the last two NFC championship games, his game plan and play-calling were ruinously conservative.

Any other relationship shall not be recognized as a marriage or its legal equivalent.” - House Bill 3190, proposed Amendment to the Massachusetts State Constitution Though the text of this proposed amendment can be agreed to by many conservatives, it is not the text that is the problem, it is the nature of positive law that endangers our liberty.

More examples in news.google.com [conservative]