By Brad Wilmouth | December 6, 2015 | 11:25 PM EST

Appearing as a panel member on CBS's Face the Nation on Sunday, PBS host Gwen Ifill made a negative characterization of GOP presidential candidates' reactions to recent terrorist attacks as she declared that, "For Republicans, it's going to be a variation of what we've seen so far, which is, 'How can we be more alarmist than the last guy?'"

She then moved to take jabs at GOPers Chris Christie and Donald Trump as she suggested that the discussion was moving away from, "What can you really do about it?"

By Curtis Houck | December 6, 2015 | 9:35 PM EST

While NBC’s Lester Holt was wondering before President Obama’s speech Sunday night if it would “be a defining moment for this presidency,” his counterparts on ABC and PBS picked up where he left off afterward by enthusiastically praising how “struck” they were by “a stern and direct” Obama “laying out" what Obama called "a strong and smart strategy” to deal with terrorism.

By Mark Finkelstein | December 6, 2015 | 9:18 PM EST

Maybe you're a liberal, reluctant to accept Charles Krauthammer's conclusion that President Obama's speech on terror tonight was a "complete failure." Fine. But there's no getting around Richard Engel, whom no one would accuse of conservatism. Speaking with Chris Matthews on MSNBC, the bleak assessment of NBC's chief foreign correspondent was that President Obama laid out "the same strategy that hasn't been working for last several years."

After a point-by-point takedown of Obama's weak tea, Engel concluded "the course of treatment that he laid out for this sick patient with cancer with no immediate cure does not seem like an incredibly strong prescription." Ouch.

By Curtis Houck | December 6, 2015 | 8:02 PM EST

Seconds before President Obama addressed the nation from the Oval Office on Sunday night, NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt gave viewers a quick preview with Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd and wondered to Todd if the speech will mark “a defining moment for this presidency.”

By Curtis Houck | December 6, 2015 | 4:48 PM EST

Center for American Progress (CAP) President Neera Tanden joined CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday morning as part of the panel and encouraged President Obama to use part of his Oval Office speech later in the day to denounce Republicans for their “continual language....to target Muslims” which she argued the GOP’s so-called Islamophobia “is exactly what ISIS wants.”

By Tom Johnson | December 6, 2015 | 12:17 PM EST

In a column posted last Monday, two days before the San Bernardino massacre, Heather Digby Parton warned of Americans with “violent desires” who might find “inspiration” to stage mass-casualty attacks not in jihadist propaganda, but in rhetoric used during “a Republican presidential debate.”

Parton linked the fatal shootings at the Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs to remarks by GOP presidential candidates and declared that those politicians “should have paused before they…exploited [the Planned Parenthood sting videos] for political gain. After all, gory illustrations of dismemberment and mutilation are the propaganda stock in trade of our most hated enemies. They are considered the gold standard for terrorist recruitment. You would think mainstream American politicians would think twice about going down that road…But they don’t.”

By Clay Waters | December 6, 2015 | 11:18 AM EST

The front page of Saturday's New York Times, next to the paper's already infamous front-page gun-control editorial, claimed that "Shootings in California Reshape the Campaigns." The language used by reporters Michael Barbaro and Trip Gabriel, was quite revealing. See how the Republican presidential candidates "angrily demanded...[rode a] rising tide of bellicosity... seethed with disgust for Democrats...Their language was almost apocalyptic..." Meanwhile they missed the "nuance" of Democratic gun-control proposals. And the paper's religion reporter Laurie Goodstein seemed to fear "Islamophobia" more than Islamic terrorism, though FBI stats show that anti-Semitic attacks are far more common.

By Tim Graham | December 5, 2015 | 6:30 PM EST

On Wednesday, Washington Post book editor Ron Charles raved over a French novel called The Age of Reinvention. The headline on the front of the Style section was “A French tale of Islamophobia and deception that feels eerily timely.”

Charles explained “it has taken more than two years for Karine Tuil’s sensational tale of Islamophobia to drift across the Atlantic. Now, though, in a horrific coincidence, her novel arrives as Paris is bleeding and the Republican presidential candidates are giddily stringing barbed wire along our borders. If I didn’t know better, I’d guess this story had been written within the past 24 hours.”

By Tom Blumer | December 5, 2015 | 10:43 AM EST

On November 18, Scott Eric Kaufman, an assistant editor at Salon, clearly thought that he had identified easy objects for ridicule in Megyn Kelly and former radical Muslim fundamentalist Morten Storm.

Kaufman ridiculed Fox as "nightmare fuel for elderly white people who just want to celebrate Christmas" after Storm, a former al Qaeda terrorist, predicted that "within the next two weeks, we will have an attack" on U.S. soil on a "softer target." Kaufman really ought to be more careful about whom he mocks — but then again, he's at Salon, where there's apparently no accountability, or sense of shame.

By Clay Waters | December 4, 2015 | 7:28 PM EST

Patrick Healy reported in Thursday's New York Times that "Skittish Over Terrorism, Some Voters Seek a Gutsy Style of Leader." "Skittish" [excitable, easily scared] is a pretty condescending way to characterize the American public's legitimate fears of terrorism. But far worse is Healy's inference that Republican rhetoric on Syrian refugees had stoked threats against mosques. He also linked the rough treatment of a Black Lives Matter activist who disrupted a Trump rally to a shooting at a BLM protest in Minneapolis

By Mark Finkelstein | December 3, 2015 | 9:36 PM EST

Rudy Giuliani has said that if you can't figure out that what happened in San Bernardino was an act of terror, "you're a moron." But from Chris Hayes, to the FBI, to a representative of the Muslim community, to a Mother Jones reporter, to President Obama himself, one thing emerged from Hayes' MSNBC show tonight: they're all terribly confused and cautious about what possibly could have been the "motive" of the San Bernardino shooters.

Check out the video montage. It would be comical but for the heinous circumstances—and the unwillingness of the country's political, media and religious leaders to call out radical Islamic terrorism when they see it.

By Curtis Houck | December 3, 2015 | 9:18 PM EST

Following the liberal media’s strategy of attacking God-fearing people for offering their “thoughts and prayers” concerning the San Bernardino shooting, Thursday’s NBC Nightly News joined that chorus with a unrelenting report from NBC News correspondent and MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell that also lamented the lack of Democratic gun control proposals. She touted: "Liberal blogger Igor Volsky set off a tweet storm, calling out lawmakers who offer prayers but oppose new gun laws, pointing out how much money they received from the NRA."