The press really is in the tank for Obama. How else can one characterize this request?

Sen. John McCain's top campaign strategist accused the news media Tuesday of being "on a mission to destroy" Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin by displaying "a level of viciousness and scurrilousness" in pursuing questions about her personal life.

In an extraordinary and emotional interview, Steve Schmidt said his campaign feels "under siege" by wave after wave of news inquiries that have questioned whether Palin is really the mother of a 4-month-old baby, whether her amniotic fluid had been tested and whether she would submit to a DNA test to establish the child's parentage.

Of all the audacity! Could you imagine the outrage if folks started asking for DNA tests to prove that Barack is the father of the children Michelle Obama claims are his? Or perhaps an exhumation of the infant killed with Joe Biden's first wife in 1972, just to make sure that she was really the Senator's child and put to rest the speculation that the entire accident was a set-up to get rid of an unfaithful wife and her love-child?

Of course, there is no actual question as to the parentage of the Obama children, or of the faithfulness and paternity of the two Bidens who died so tragically in 1972. But then again, there was and is no legitimate reason to believe that Trig Palin is not the child of Sarah and Todd Palin -- and all three requests ought to be considered beyond the realm of decency. Any so-called journalist who would make such requests, and any media outlet that employs them, have sunk from objectivity into baseless scandal-mongering. That it was presumed appropriate to seek such information from the Palins is a sign of how partisan our "objective media" has become.

But it isn't the first time we've hat such a situation this year, with the press being so partisan that it failed in its proper role. After all, there were serious questions raised about Barack Obama's citizenship this year, including the filing of a federal lawsuit on the matter. For some reason the media never bothered to seriously pursue questions about Barack Obama's birth certificate -- and that had a direct bearing on his eligibility for the office he seeks. Seems to me we still have not seen the ORIGINAL document signed by the physicians in 1961 -- will the press get cracking on that story?

After all, if they have time for something so outlandish and irrelevant as a request for DNA tests, wouldn't it be reasonable for them to obtain a public record that is relevant to the constitutional qualifications of one of the candidates for the job?

[NOTE: For the record, I'm not questioning Obama's citizenship -- I've written on that matter before. I'm just pointing out the clear double standard at work in the media.]