By Bruce Bookter | December 15, 2015 | 10:45 PM EST

It took ESPN’s Bomani Jones about an hour and a half into Tuesday night’s CNN GOP debate (pretty strong for him actually) before he did what he does best, and let his race flag fly.

By Scott Whitlock | December 15, 2015 | 10:17 PM EST

In a bizarre exchange, co-debate moderator Hugh Hewitt on Tuesday night pressed Ben Carson as to whether he was “tough” enough to kill thousands of children. Hewitt lectured, “We're talking about ruthless things tonight. Carpet bombing, toughness, war. And people wonder, could you do that?” 

By Ken Shepherd | December 15, 2015 | 8:05 PM EST

Former John McCain presidential campaign advisor Steve Schmidt pushed back against Chris Matthews on tonight's Hardball when the latter whipped out his tired Bush-caused-ISIS talking point.

By Curtis Houck | December 15, 2015 | 8:04 PM EST

Just after the undercard Republican presidential debate began on Tuesday night, the “big three” networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC offered previews of the impending “freewheeling and fiery slugfest” debate and contrasted that with plenty of laudatory rhetoric for “grown up” Hillary Clinton as she spoke in Minnesota about ISIS and “slamm[ed] Republicans for fearmongering.”

By Dylan Gwinn | December 15, 2015 | 7:19 PM EST

Donald Trump is Yuuugely disappointed (I’ll show myself out) at MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred for declining to reinstate Pete Rose. How do we know this? Because he tweeted about it, of course.

By Dylan Gwinn | December 15, 2015 | 6:55 PM EST

Ironic that some of the most vocal support Donald Trump would receive from the sports world, after declaring he wants to ban Muslim entry into the U.S., would come from…well…a Muslim. But Iron Mike Tyson has put the Iron in Irony by doing just that.

By Melissa Mullins | December 15, 2015 | 5:01 PM EST

On Sunday's This Week, they concluded the show with a feminist tribute. ABC’s Cokie Roberts sat down with feminist legend Gloria Steinem for what should’ve been an interview on her first book in over 20 years, My Life on the Road. Instead, it was a celebration of her life. George Stephanopoulos gushed that Steinem “sat down with our own pathbreaker, Cokie Roberts, for a look back at 50 years of change in feminism and journalism.”

Roberts began by suggesting today’s young women don’t appreciate the Old Guard enough:” “Gloria Steinem, loved and hated by millions, grew up in a world modern Americans wouldn't recognize. Women were legally denied jobs and credit and shut out of prominent positions. But instead of accepting that world, she led a movement to change it.

By Tom Johnson | December 15, 2015 | 4:55 PM EST

When it comes to global warming, Esquire’s Charles Pierce implies, it’s now conservative Republicans and a few hidebound Democrats versus pretty much everyone and everything else, including the world’s non-human animals and its plant life. Meanwhile, New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait opined that the Paris climate deal was “probably the [Obama] administration’s most important accomplishment."

By Matthew Balan | December 15, 2015 | 4:05 PM EST

MSNBC's Joe Scarborough blasted Marco Rubio in a series of posts on Twitter on Tuesday. Scarborough linked to Rubio's latest TV ad and contended that "Marco goes full-on nativist. Says he feels out of place in his own country. It's such a crass play. It's offensive." The Republican senator led the ad by stating, "This election is about the essence of America -- about all of us who feel out of place in our own country." The anchor claimed that "the second most nativist statement according to pollsters is 'these days, I feel like a stranger in my own country.'"

By Brad Wilmouth | December 15, 2015 | 2:12 PM EST

As the Reverend Franklin Graham appeared on Tuesday's CNN Newsroom to promote a national call to prayer, host Carol Costello raised charges that "heated rhetoric about Muslims" is "causing mosques to come under attack," and, after asking her guest if he thought Islam was "compatible with American values," fretted over his answer when he responded, "I don't think so." The CNN host followed up: "See, some people say that rhetoric like that is hurting them."

After the Reverend Graham took issue with the treatment of women and others within the Muslim faith, Costello suggested that Catholicism might be just as culpable as she responded: "I could say that about my own faith within Catholicism, right? I could."

By Clay Waters | December 15, 2015 | 1:09 PM EST

The latest from New York Times reporter Kirk Semple on the front page of Tuesday’s Times, “Muslim Youth in U.S. Feel Strain of Suspicion,” demonstrates that the paper’s strongest impulse after Islamic terror attacks is not to investigate what went wrong but to fret over perceived, anecdotal “Islamophobia” among their fellow citizens. It’s much like his previous, anecdote-heavy, statistic-free “CAIR” package (as in Council on American-Islamic Relations) that Semple delivered in late November, an article completely dominated by CAIR sources in which Semple quite comfortably accused his fellow Americans of Islamophobia on the basis of anecdotes.

By Kyle Drennen | December 15, 2015 | 11:50 AM EST

After covering the upcoming Republican presidential debate on Tuesday, NBC Today co-host Matt Lauer promoted Hillary Clinton preparing to attack her GOP rivals: “Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton is planning a preemptive strike against the barrage of criticism that she's expecting from her Republican rivals on that stage tonight. So today she’ll make her case on how she’d take on the ISIS threat.”