Barack Obama has been effectively coated with Teflon® by a liberal media anxious that no flaws ever become apparent in the image fashioned of a man running against cynicism, the presumptive Republican nominee. How else to explain the passes granted to him on everything from his racialist "spiritual mentor" (his term), now being consigned to obscurity.  

CBS Stops Reader Comments on Obama 

From the NY Times Caucus blog:

CBSNews.com has been getting so many vitriolic comments about Senator Barack Obama, Democrat of Illinois, that it has taken the unusual step of blocking all reader comments on its stories about Mr. Obama.

The CBS decision highlights the ways in which presidential campaigns, news organizations and the general public are grappling with the growing influence of the Internet on politics. There is no rule book for resolving clashes among the anything-goes ethos of the Web, the efforts by candidates to harness it to their ends and the standards that mainstream journalism has tried to impose on what appears under its banner. [....]

But reader comments on VP Cheney are still ok (obscenities obscured with *s):

Barack Obama, caught up in the fervor of a campaign speech Tuesday, drastically overstated the Kansas tornadoes death toll, saying thousands had died. [emphasis added]

"In case you missed it, this week, there was a tragedy in Kansas. Ten thousand people died -- an entire town destroyed," Obama said in a 27-minute speech to 500 people packed into a sweltering art studio for a fundraiser.