Making the private/public distinction with Van Jones

In the private sector, I'd defend Van Jones against any movement to silence him. Jones has a right to his opinions, and in the free market he would be one voice competing among many others, if he could get a private source to allow him a forum and promote his opinions -- and with the billions of progressive dollars floating around the cause, he shouldn't have any problems finding a soapbox.

But to subsidize Van Jones' opinions with tax dollars is another story. I suppose the administration has the right to hire who they want to hire, but this seems like a bone-headed decision by Valerie Jarrett, and it must be asked how Jarret could have followed Van Jones from his San Diego days and still think he was a good choice for Green Czar, enough so to recommend him to Obama.

Surely she told President Obama about his radical views. I find it difficult to believe, as loud as Van Jones is, that people in the White House didn't know about his rasdical progressive views and his statement about being a communist a few years back -- plus, his most recent views which sound communist-inspired -- I don't know how else to honestly describe them. How does someone like Jones get through the vetting process? This brings up serious concerns about Obama's advisers -- and Valerie Jarrett is one of his closest advisiors -- and it brings up questions regarding Obama's judgement, if not his core beliefs.

You can't claim to be intellectually honest and not find many disconcerting elements in this whole controversy. If Bush had appointed someone like this there would have been fire and brimstone coverage from ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSCBN, NPR, The Washington Post, The NYT and every other major news outlet that has lately shown shameless bias in favor of the Democrat Party -- they would have screamed out in unison against Bush, with each story being just a bit different in wording but similar in content.

The same major news outlets were silent about Van Jones until the resignation and then covered the story as a Republican hatchet job, for the most part -- at least that is what was implied. This is intellectual dishonesty and biased news coverage.

On the other hand, if Van Jones was a private citizen, and the major news media had mostly a right tilt, and there was an effort to silence Jones in the media -- it would be appropriate to defend Jones' right to his ideas and to free speech.

In this situation, everyone in the new media who claims to be a new-type, objective media concerned with intellectual honesty, ought to be condemning every major news outlet, except Fox (at least Fox covered it), for their shameful display of partisanship -- and they ought to be hot on the trail of Valerie Jarrett.