Last night I noted how Chris Matthews took as literal a hyperbolic statement that Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-La.) made regarding the Supreme Court. Tonight, the Hardball host repeated the attack on Jindal, sneering that it put him in the "clown car."
Judiciary
By Scott Whitlock | June 30, 2015 | 4:16 PM EDT
A cranky Lawrence O'Donnell on Monday lashed out at the "terrible" Antonin Scalia, deriding the Supreme Court justice for his "wacky," bad writing. O'Donnell wondered if the conservative is "now the Donald Trump of the Supreme Court?" O'Donnell hosted a panel discussion on Scalia's dissents over ObamaCare and gay marriage. The liberal host complained, "...These are just terrible bits that he is sticking into these opinions and terrible thinker. And they are combined, you know, in that wacky reference he made the other day."
By Matthew Balan | June 30, 2015 | 4:15 PM EDT
On Tuesday, CNN's Jim Acosta asked President Obama about "what some people are calling 'your best week ever.'" Acosta played up that "you had two Supreme Court decisions supportive of the Affordable Care Act and of gay rights. You also delivered a speech down in Charleston that was pretty warmly received." The correspondent then underlined that 'it seems that you've built up some political capital for the remaining months of your presidency." He asked, "I'm curious, how you want to use it? What hard things do you want to tackle at this point?"
By Curtis Houck | June 29, 2015 | 9:21 PM EDT
On Monday night, the networks showed scant interest in covering the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling against the Obama administration and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on the regulation of power plant emissions as NBC ignored the story completely with ABC and CBS combining to spend only 29 seconds on the decision. While ABC and CBS came together to spend just under 30 seconds on this story, the Fox News Channel’s Special Report led off its Monday night broadcast with a segment by correspondent Shannon Bream on the final rulings of the Court’s term.
By Ken Shepherd | June 29, 2015 | 9:18 PM EDT
Does Chris Matthews not get hyperbole? Back behind the desk at Hardball tonight after a few days off, the MSNBC host didn't seem to get that presidential candidate Bobby Jindal was being rhetorically hyperbolic when he quipped that given how political the Supreme Court has become, he kind of wouldn't mind abolishing the high court.
By Brad Wilmouth | June 29, 2015 | 2:18 PM EDT
On Monday's CNN Newsroom, anchor Carol Costello talked up the idea that it would be better for Republicans to just accept the recent liberal Supreme Court ruling bolstering same-sex marriage as she hosted a discussion with right-leaning CNN commentator Tara Setmayer and Democratic strategist Chris Kofinis. As Setmayer predicted that different GOP presidential candidates would put forth different ideas on how to react to the ruling, Costello posed the question:
By Matthew Balan | June 27, 2015 | 1:07 AM EDT
On Friday, ABC's World News Tonight aired a completely one-sided report on the Supreme Court's ruling that legalized same-sex "marriage" in all 50 states. Terry Moran hyped how Justice Anthony Kennedy "wrote today's landmark opinion describing the stakes in this case in the loftiest terms." Moran failed to include any soundbites from social conservative opponents of the decision, and hyped how "Justice Scalia, in a rage, scorning Kennedy's poetic opinion as little more than a 'fortune cookie.'"
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By Tom Johnson | June 27, 2015 | 12:38 AM EDT
Conservatives are accustomed to admiring the work and deploring the politics of artists like Bruce Springsteen and Stephen King. Michael Tomasky wrote Thursday that some liberals have had roughly similar feelings about Antonin Scalia, but that’s over now because of Scalia’s dissent in King v. Burwell, which was devoid of the justice’s usual “writerly flair and intellectual acumen.”
“It long ago became a kind of fetish, the anticipation of reading Scalia’s opinions,” remarked Tomasky. “There was always an excess of intellectual and moral certitude, to be sure, but there was also wit and a kind of joyfulness of battle whether he was on the winning or losing side…But that was then. This decision is something else again. Here, there is no wit. There is just bile. As you read along you can veritably see his carotid artery pulsing, growing; smell the sweat flopping out of the pores...The law lives, and he is livid.”
By Curtis Houck | June 26, 2015 | 2:01 PM EDT
After the first broadcast network special reports on Friday morning about the Supreme Court’s decision to approve gay marriage, they returned hours later to gush after President Obama’s remarks how “eloquently” he spoke and pronounce him to be “the America of tomorrow” as an “angry” Antonin Scalia comes to grips with the news that “his side” of “the culture battle” “has lost.” ABC News correspondent Terry Moran hyped after the President’s speech how “Scalia is angry again” by having “cast scorn” on the majority ruling in his dissenting opinion.
By Curtis Houck | June 26, 2015 | 12:44 PM EDT
Following President Obama’s statement on Supreme Court’s ruling Friday morning to legalize gay marriage in all 50 states, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer couldn’t help but marvel at how “years from now, historians will write about this week – amazing week here in the United States” as President Obama saw favorable rulings on ObamaCare and gay marriage in addition to Congress passing “his free trade authority legislation.” As the President left the podium at the White House Rose Garden, Blitzer reminded viewers that Obama was speaking “[f]or the second day in a row” so he could “applaud a major historic United States Supreme Court decision.”
By Curtis Houck | June 26, 2015 | 11:31 AM EDT
During ABC’s Special Report on the Supreme Court’s decision to legalize gay marriage, correspondent Terry Moran gushed that the reaction to the ruling by the crowd gathered outside the Court was akin to “a spark of fire as we understood what was actually done here” as “those interns ran across the plaza.”
By Curtis Houck | June 25, 2015 | 11:23 PM EDT
Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling in favor of President Obama in the ObamaCare subsidy case, the “big three” of ABC, CBS, and NBC were out in full force during their Thursday evening newscasts to cheer the “historic ruling” and labeled Chief Justice John Roberts as a “conservative” after having “saved” ObamaCare “from a devastating blow.” CBS anchor Scott Pelley assured viewers in an opening tease that “[m]illions of Americans will keep their health insurance as the Supreme Court today saves the President's signature law.”