According to voter registration records, Ariel Castro, the Cleveland kidnapper, is a registered Democrat.  He was also the alleged leader among the three Castro brothers, who were arrested this week, and the owner of the house at 2207 Seymour Ave., where the three abducted local women had been kept in captivity for over a decade.

Why is this important?  Whenever a crime or a scandal captures national attention, the pattern in the mainstream media is to either identify the culprit as a Republican or hold silence -- in which case we can rest assured that the culprit is a Democrat.

When the identity or the party affiliation is yet unknown, the pattern is to speculate publicly about the possibility of the criminal being a conservative, Christian, white, Republican, and a Tea Party member -- and never that he could be a Hispanic Democrat voter playing bass in a meringue band.

In today's divisive climate, the identity of a perpetrator is always a political issue, especially when a crime is committed by men against women.  According to the Daily News, "What the neighbors saw was terrifying and dehumanizing: Naked women on dog leashes, crawling in the dirt. A lady clutching an infant and pounding on a window for help."

If any of the brothers were a Republican, this news would have been trumpeted by the mainstream media as tangible proof of the Republican War on Women -- a narrative invented by Democrat strategists and maintained by the media in a successful effort to defeat Republican candidates in the 2012 election cycle.

However, when a real act of war on women is perpetrated by a Democrat voter in the manner that even the most zealous Democrat strategist couldn't have dreamed up in their worst nightmares -- involving abduction, imprisonment, rape, torture, malnutrition, beatings while pregnant, and killing babies -- the media doesn't think the party affiliation is relevant.

I'm not saying that in this case it is.  What's relevant is the relentless media bias, taunting, and bullying of conservatives and Republicans.

Unhappy with the overall media coverage, one of our readers decided to do his own research of the Castro brothers' party affiliation and contacted this author with his findings with this note:

I couldn't find anything on their political views in the newspapers, which is a sign they are NOT Republicans. I then searched public nation-wide voter registration records and found this giant file. It's now official: the Cleveland kidnapper is a registered Democrat. This answers the question, which side actually 'wants women barefoot, illiterate, and pregnant'.

Another good question is, what had prompted this reader to even think about doing this research?  Apparently, he is one of many Republicans whom the continued media slander is causing to constantly look over his shoulder and, at any sign of trouble, check whether the guilty could be Republicans, and sigh with relief when they aren't.

It isn't a symptom of a healthy nation when a large segment of the country's population, including men and women of all colors and ethnic backgrounds, is being systematically and unfairly defamed and pestered by another segment of the country with the help of the media and the political establishment, creating a hostile cultural and work environment, which leads to persistent feelings of worry, unease, frustration, and fear.

Perhaps it's time to expand the dictionary definition of harassment as follows:

POLITICAL HARASSMENT: systematic and continued tormenting of one party or a group, including insults, slurs, and demands intended to disturb, upset, and demoralize political opponents.  The purposes may include prejudice, personal malice, attempts to apply pressure on Congress to pass a bill, force someone to resign or to grant political favors, blackmail (I'll out you to the boss unless you change your stand on certain issues), or merely sadistic pleasure from making someone fearful or anxious.

In a way, the Democrat political machine, which includes the mainstream media, are trying to do to the Republicans and the rest of the country what the Castro brothers did to the women they abducted and forcibly put in their "care."

That's why the news that Ariel Castro is a Democrat may be relevant after all.