It is dark out there.

My dog is afraid of the dark outside. I walk him all winter long in the dark before dawn and again at night  after work. It is dark and cold and he is very alert to anything that is out there in the dark. He does not like walking in the dark, he will walk in the middle of the road if I let him, lest anything pop out of the shadows and grab him.  Or woe to anything that pops out of the shadows and tries to grab me, because my dog will come to my defense.  Yesterday I took him out in the light and we did a couple of miles in the snow out in the woods.  I was not paying much attention as I was looking at the trail map and before I knew it, his hair was up and he was growling.  A trail runner was approaching .  I pulled  the dog  up on his leash  and scolded him for being so instinctively defensive, but dogs can be that way.  They sense trouble and they will protect their humans.  But not every situation is dangerous.  A silent trail runner poses no danger other than perhaps startling the only other human in a 2000 acre wilderness preserve on a day of 15 degree temperatures.

Humans seemingly have lost some of that defensive instinct in its purest form.  Sure we will come to the aid of someone in danger, but it must be full blown and active.  A fire, an accident, a fall.  It must have drama and impact.  Anything less than that requires nothing more than a nod of the head, or so it would seem.

Today, I opened my local Newspapre and read the editorial page.  The paper is  The Record.  There was a time that the paper was a decent paper.  But it has allowed its slants to become too pronounced.
It is virulently anti Catholic.  It is anti Republican.  It is shameless in its spinining of one progressive agenda after another.It is unwilling to allow even the most gentle of counterpoint.  Personally, I think this type of thing has lead to a steady decline in readership as it has for many other news papers.

Would it be that the press was the watch dog rather than the lap dog it has become. People totally devoid of interest and savy seeking only to further an agenda spoon fed to them while in college . Not a single one of them on the scene today that can go to the mat over a principaled approach to life.

The newspaper editor was spinning the Menedez story.  It was spinning in a way that was most solicitous of Mr. Menedez.  It even went on about how--this is what politicians do.  They take care of their constituents.  How is it that a south Florida Eye Doctor with big time medicare  wealth and a design on port security contracts suddenly becomes a constient.

A constituent of Mr. Menedez is a person in Moonachie or Little Ferry , who still has no heat because they were wiped out by Irene.  Or it is a shore business that won't reopen for summer of 2013. It is a senior citizen burdened by the highest property and income tax rate of any state in the union.

Putting the odious business of the underage prostitues aside , Mr. Menedez has not acted as he should have and the newspaper in trying to spin it in his direction has failed in its role of watchdog.   The instincts have been lost.  It is now a lap dog.  I would not trust to its ability to walk me through the dark night our nation finds itself in now.