For the record: I have no problem with President Obama taking the First Lady to a Broadway show. The White House shouldn't be a prison.

However, it's more than a little hypocritical for Obama to call for belt-tightening in these economic times, lambasting companies who provide junkets in Las Vegas and ripping into the Big Three autmakers CEOs for flying private jets at the same time he does this -- likely costing the taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The worst part of it is the fact that I can tell you without a doubt that MSNBC, the NYT and most of the rest of the mainstream media wouldn't have been so understanding had the president's name been Bush.

A related column by Robert Samuelson -- no right-wing zealot he -- on the press's passivity can be found here.