WELL, THAT SETTLES THAT: Howie Kurtz today profiles a piece by "Washington Monthly" editor Paul Glastris that Kurtz believes refutes the charge of "liberal media bias." The reasoning?

The conservative press is purely partisan, while the mainstream weenie press is concerned with issues like fairness and balance – and, in fact, often criticized Bill Clinton and other Democrats. That it's not really an even fight, heavyweight boxers versus high school debaters. That Democrats are actually hamstrung because they try to play to the major editorial pages, while the Republicans, with knives in their teeth, couldn't care less.

Here's some of what Glastris wrote:

The difference in partisan intensity also reflects the different media outlets to which the parties play. Democrats in Washington focus incessantly on the establishment press: The New York Times, The Washington Post, Newsweek, CBS, CNN, NPR. That is where their worldview is shaped, and where they look for validation of their ideas and status. Republican leaders are hardly indifferent to the establishment outlets. But they increasingly take their cue from the expanding alternative universe of conservative media: The Washington Times, The Wall Street Journal editorial page, talk radio, Fox News Channel. Needless to say, these two media worlds are governed by radically different rules. Yes, there is a certain amount of liberal bias in the mainstream press. But on balance, the big national papers and broadcast networks take seriously the traditional journalistic strictures of fairness, accuracy, and independence of judgement. The conservative press, by and large, does not labor under these constraints. It does not pretend to be in the business of presenting all sides fairly, but of promoting its side successfully.

So when the conservative press fact-checks the "mainstream" media, it's tossing the "traditional journalistic strictures of fairness, accuracy and independence of judgment" out the window. Take that, Heather MacDonald.

And here's something Glastris doesn't even begin to touch on. Forget coverage of individual candidates and the scandal-mongering of the Clinton years. The mainstream media's daily, routine coverage of the agendas advanced by the core constituencies of the Democrats - minorities, women, gays - is invariably sympathetic. Democratic candidates are invariably presented as friends of these constituencies, while Republicans are invariably presented as the enemies of these groups. When it comes time to vote, emotional issues such as these easily trump questions about tax cuts or who did what with the budget surplus. There are books, Web sites, magazines and studies I could cite, but most people on the right side of the room are already familiar with them. Perhaps Glastris should look into them, too.

There's one other thing I didn't like about Glastris' column. He resurrects the myth of the right-wing "mob" that shut down the Dade County recount during the 2000 presidential election controversy. He pretends Gore was taking the higher ground because he allegedly "expressly ordered that unionists, civil rights activists, and other liberal ground troops should stay out of Florida." Well, Gore may or may not have said that, but I think the sorry spectacles that Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton put on day after day after day lingered in people's minds a lot longer than a one-day outburst of GOP "thuggishness." Then there's this gem: "(Gore representative) Warren Christopher sent lawyers to Florida. (Bush representative) James Baker sent lawyers---and press people, and political surrogates, and operatives to stir up Cuban street protests." That's laughable, to say the least.