There’s a cover-up underway and The News & Observer is part of it. Today, in an editorial and a news story, there is no mention of the unprecedented number of lies, gaffes and errors Joe Biden uttered in Thursday’s vice presidential debate.

This is, simply put, journalistic malpractice. It is a corrupt withholding of evidence to get a specified outcome, i.e., the election of Barack Obama. Sadly, it’s not just our local papers that are involved. It’s a journalistic disgrace that is national in scope. Ask yourself, if Sarah Palin had made even one of the horrific mistakes Biden made, there would be demands for her to be taken off the ticket.

Refrences to Biden’s gaffes, lies and errors on the internet come from bloggers and the McCain campaign because no mainstream media outlet seems to have noticed how dreadful his performance actually was, including The N&O.

When attempts were made to fact check the debate, most mainstream media came to the conclusion that “both made their share” of mistakes, a sure sign that Biden was atrocious. ABC, for instance, ignored most of Biden’s errors and found that Palin, horror of horrors, mispronounced the name of Army Gen. David D. McKiernan.

For a man supposedly so well-versed in foreign policy, his contention that we “kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon” is as laughable as it is frighteningly ignorant. As Michael Totten, a blogger who has spent quite a bit of time there, said:

What on Earth is he talking about? The United States and France may have kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon in an alternate universe, but nothing even remotely like that ever happened in this one.

Nobody – nobody – has ever kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon. Not the United States. Not France. Not Israel. And not the Lebanese. Nobody.

Joe Biden has literally no idea what he’s talking about.

Where are the fact-checking journalistic hordes now? The ones who spent weeks in Wasilla, Alaska, uncovering every minute aspect of Sarah Palin and her family’s lives? They are willfully ignoring evidence and withholding it from the American people they are supposed to be informing.

Sort of like Mike Nifong did in the Duke lacrosse case.