Obama's remarks about bitter Pennsylvanians clinging to God and guns made the front page of today's Inquirer.

Curiously, even though it's a Pennsylvania story, they ran a NY Times piece which does not appear at the Inquirer's web site. I figured it would be easy enough to find the piece (after all, I only wanted to quote a few words), so I Googled part of the first sentence -- "The Democratic nominating fight took a sudden turn..." All the links point to this piece by Katharine Q. Seelye and Jeff Zeleny, but I've been opening it up repeatedly, and the "sudden turn" language seems to have dissappeared. What gives? Did some reporter goof? Are they now trying to throw Obama a lifeline? I just want to know why the Times called the Obama remarks a "sudden turn" in the first paragraph and now they don't.

I thought that maybe I should analyze the now missing language. The entire first paragraph that stares at me from the Inquirer is now missing, but some dutiful Freeper (perhaps bitter about being called bitter) supplied it:

The New York Times ^ | April 13, 2008 | KATHARINE Q. SEELYE and JEFF ZELENY
The Democratic nominating fight took a sudden turn with Senator Barack Obama's comments about small-town Pennsylvania voters providing an opening for the Clinton campaign to raise anew questions about Mr. Obama's ability to lure working-class voters.

You know things are getting really bad when you have to go to the Free Republic to find the text of what's on the front page of the Philadelphia Inquirer!

The "sudden turn" language still appears in links to a few news aggregators like this and this but even that is disappearing, and I had to resort to the Google cache.

Thinking maybe the first paragraph had been dropped, I Googled the language from the fourth paragraph -- "the furor represented something of a last minute gift." Once again, the links pointed to the same Times piece, but the words were nowhere to be found.

Hmmm...

I had to go into full-blown, teeth-pulling mode, but I finally found the text which was nearly identical to that in the Inquirer at a site called the Ebolowa blog. Normally, I do not lift entire stories, but in this case, I had to work so hard to find it that I thought I should place it below so that interested readers can click to read it.

I'm curious about the mechanism here. Perhaps someone can explain to me how so much language could be first reported, then summarily dropped. Is the Times now acting like the BBC and changing stories when activists complain? Or are these stories put out through the news wire, allowing subscribing news outlets to run them in the print editions only, with the Times then changing them later?

I notice that the story below has a few very minor differences in wording from the Inquirer version, and closes with "Julie Bosman contributed reporting." The Inquirer version closes with "Inquirer senior writer Larry Eichel contributed to this article." As to Julie Bosman, she writes for the Times, and used to be the Washington assistant to Maureen Dowd, so I suspect that the story below is the original Times piece, as fed out over the wires. Larry Eichel is a longtime Inquirer reporter, widely respected as a straight shooter, and he made very few changes.

OK, while this example of "now you see it, now you don't," might not be the biggest deal in the world, let's assume subscribing newspapers are allowed to use these stories. Why would they not be allowed to place them online? Does the Times retain the right to control its Only Official Story, and make changes whenever it sees fit?

Maybe they do. Certainly, they can do whatever they want with their own words, as the First Amendment gives them the right to revise, alter, or delete whatever and whenever they want.

I have no problem with editing, and I do it all the time. But what happened here was more than editing. By taking out entire paragraphs containing language like "took a sudden turn" and "last-minute gift to the Clinton campaign" the entire tone and theme of the story is altered.

Any blogger who did this would not retain much credibility.

Anyway, I only wanted to comment on a couple of things. First, while the campaign did indeed take a sudden turn, the most sudden turn of all has been Hillary's very opportunistic claim to be a Second Amendment supporter. Just before the uproar over the Obama remarks broke, she was campaigning with Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter -- shortly after his dramatic signing of illegal gun control laws. While ducking the issue of whether she supported the laws, she renewed a call for the assault weapon ban:

Nutter often cites what he calls Clinton's ability to understand how to deal with the problems facing big cities as a reason he supports her. The New York senator's crime-fighting plan includes an anti-gun-trafficking initiative that would be based on partnerships between the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) and local law enforcement to improve tracking of gun crimes and to prosecute traffickers. It would renew the Assault Weapons Ban and repeal the Tiahrt amendment, which limits the ATF's ability to share federal gun-trace data with local law enforcement.

Nutter signed five new gun-control laws yesterday that would limit handgun purchases in the city to one a month and require that lost or stolen firearms be reported to police within 24 hours, among other measures. The new laws are controversial because gun regulation is under the state's purview, not the city's. The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that the National Rifle Association plans to sue.

Gun control as an issue has not come up very frequently with Clinton on the campaign trail, but it could be important here in Pennsylvania, a state with a lot of gun owners. In the lead-up to the Wisconsin primary, she made a point of talking about learning to shoot a gun and her experience hunting. She often says she supports the 2nd Amendment and she believes her cities and states have a role to play in confronting the challenges presented by firearms. But it was not clear whether she would support the Nutter measures specifically or these kinds of measures generally. When asked during an interview with local radio this morning about what she would do as president to address the issue of cities and gun regulation, she gave her standard answer before going on talk up the proposals in her anti-crime agenda.

"I would start looking for a balance and find some common ground and end the polarization that has gone on," she said. "Obviously, I take the issue of gun crime and gun violence very seriously, and I'm also committed to protecting people's constitutional rights under the 2nd Amendment to own and bear arms and I don't see why we can't do both."

Yes, bitter. I did say that, and I won't retract it.

I think gun owners often find themselves bitter. Not because of bad economic times, but because of the endless attempts to screw around with them. Similarly, religious people face situations like the one I blogged about earlier, when busybody bureaucrats treat religious views as outside the scope of normal First Amendment protections.

So I have to agree with the last part of Obama's statement that "it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion."

I find it very telling that he would use the word "cling."

Clinging is a very normal human reaction that we all have when people are trying to take away what is ours. Liberals (Obama and Hillary being only two notable examples) have a long record of trying to take away guns.

What gun owner would not cling to his guns, perhaps even with feelings grounded in bitterness?

While I can only speak for myself, liberal gun grabbers like Obama, Hillary and Michael Nutter often make me feel like clinging to my guns -- to the bitter end. (Isn't that reflected in the phrase "from my cold dead hands"?) And what Philadelphia gun owner wouldn't feel embittered by the lawless and reckless attempt by Hillary's supporter Mayor Nutter to take away their guns?

OTOH, considering the time I've spent clinging to the New York Times story to the bitter end, I might be clingier than average.

(But things could be worse! At least I didn't say that they could have the story back when they pull it from my cold dead hands.)

UPDATE: My thanks to Glenn Reynolds for the link, and a warm welcome to all.

Anyone who can explain the mechanism of how this spin control works, I'm all ears.