Good morning sweet, sweet, City Desk readers, and welcome to another installment of Freedom Friday! We have a new justice at the Supreme Court of the United States—isn’t that exciting? Dear race-baiting Republicans: Better luck next time (kisses).

In other other interesting news, the New York Times fired its second token conservative yesterday. Ben Stein, of the late John Hughes‘ Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, was relieved of his financial column for acting as “a commercial spokesman for FreeScore, a financial services company,” according to Felix Salmon. Not too long ago the Times declined to renew William Kristol‘s contract because of the error-riddled dreck he scribbled in crayon on ripped paper bags and then forced into the NYT courier’s chubby cheeks for transport. I completely agree with both decisions but find it sickening that the Times can’t seem to part with Maureen Dowd,  a plagiarist, total luddite, and liberal sycophant; or Alessandra Stanley, who writes her column using a quill filled with unhappiness and checks her reporting against the ingredients list on a box of crack-cocaine. Simply put:  The Times needs to hold its writers to a higher standard.

Birthers after the jump.
Some really smart people, like the Examiner‘s Tim Carney and David Freddoso, are calling the heavy birther coverage the product of media bias. Here’s their argument:

Twenty-eight percent of Republicans believe President Obama is not a natural-born citizen of the United States, and 30 percent are “not sure,” according to this poll.

But before liberals begin to smirk, here’s a poll from 2007, in which 35 percent of Democrats said that President Bush knew in advance about the 9/11 attacks, and 26 percent were not sure.

The next thing they say is that the media ignored the 9/11 conspiracy theories because they were covering for liberals but have latched on to the birther movement because it’s led by conservatives. The only problem with this assessment is that in the wake of 9/11 NO ELECTED DEMOCRATS SPONSORED LEGISLATION ACCUSING PRESIDENT BUSH OF ALLOWING 9/11 TO HAPPEN. There were no U.S. Rep. Randy Neugebauers out there. No former Clinton Administration officials making birth certificate jokes while campaigning for executive office in their home states. In short, the poll results reveal what citizens feel. But as we’ve seen with the birther movement, even elected officials are hoping/praying/wishing that this is true. And that, folks, is scary.

Perhaps of equal significance, TV wasn’t taking its cues from the Internet in 2001. But it’s sure as hell doing it now. Goddamn dinosaurs.