The NBA is investigating one of its referees for gambling on games that he officiated, a very serious charge. A basketball ref has a lot of power. He can whistle a foul at key moments that can change the outcome of a game or finesse the final point spread.

But in the big scheme of things, it’s a tempest in a teapot. We have other “refs” to worry about.

In an ideal world, the news media would function like disinterested referees, serving to keep both sides of the political debate honest. But they don’t. For one, the mainstream media suffer from group think: they vote overwhelmingly Democrat and think liberal. There is virtually no ideological diversity in newsrooms.

Thus the contest of ideas in America is rigged to favor Democrats.

Consider the Iraq war, arguably the biggest issue of our time. The Democrats were strident about getting rid of Saddam Hussein when Clinton was president. They spoke belligerent words (our Big Lie section covers this in detail). But once warehouses of WMD were not found in Iraq, they began a semantic tap dance, claiming that Bush lied or cherry-picked intelligence and so on.

You can’t blame the Democrats for seeking political advantage. But where were the “refs” in the media to blow the whistle and call a foul? Nowhere. Why did the mainstream media not read back the Democrats’ words about Saddam and expose their hypocrisy?

How can ABC News, which ran a story in 1999 linking Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, sit back in silence as Democrats purport that Bush invented such a connection?

In the 2006 election campaign much was made of Mark Foley, the Republican Congressman who sent randy gay emails to Congressional pages. Foley resigned immediately. But the news media ran Foley story after Foley story after Foley story. “How will the Foley scandal affect Republican chances?” they breathlessly intoned.

In the middle of the Foley fest, ex-Congressman Gerry Studds died. In 1973, Democrat Studds had gotten a 17-year old page drunk and sodomized him. He came on to others. He never resigned his seat, but stayed in office until he retired.

Here is how CNN reported his death:

BOSTON, Massachusetts (AP) – Former U.S. Rep. Gerry Studds, the first openly gay person elected to Congress, died early Saturday at Boston Medical Center, several days after he collapsed while walking his dog, his husband said.

Studds fell unconscious October 3 because of what doctors later determined was a blood clot in his lung, Dean Hara said.

Studds regained consciousness, remained in the hospital, and seemed to be improving. He was scheduled to be transferred to a rehabilitation center, but his condition deteriorated Friday and he died at about 1:30 a.m. Saturday, Hara said.

Hara, who married Studds shortly after gay marriage was legalized in Massachusetts in 2004, said Studds was a pioneer who gave courage to gay people everywhere by winning re-election after publicly acknowledging his homosexuality.

“He gave people of his generation, or my generation, of future generations, the courage to do whatever they wanted to do,” he said.

Apparently, no harm no foul if you’re a Democrat.