Chris Matthews blasted the GOP's apparent "bad manners [and] lack of dignity" minutes before Tuesday's State of the Union address. Matthews expressed his outrage moments after MSNBC's Chris Hayes spotlighted a Republican congressman's attack on President Obama on Twitter: "The very idea that they would do this, in what is a historic occasion, just tells you that there are no rules."
The Hardball host continued by targeting the "right wing – sort of, revolutionary thinking...We're throwing stones at the window of the American republic. That's fine, because somehow, we're so angry that anything goes." [MP3 audio available here; video below the jump]
State of the Union
Matthews: GOP 'Throwing Stones at the Window of the American Republic' Before Obama's 'Historic' Address
By Matthew Balan | January 28, 2014 | 11:28 PM EST 
By Paul Bremmer | January 28, 2014 | 4:11 PM EST
In the minds of MSNBC personalities, the so-called Republican “War on Women” is fought on many fronts – even in the amount of GOP responses to this year’s State of the Union address.
On Tuesday’s Morning Joe, the panelists were discussing the three planned responses to Tuesday's State of the Union: Washington Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers’ official GOP response, Utah Sen. Mike Lee’s Tea Party response, and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul’s personal response. Co-host Mika Brzezinski, upset at the idea of three separate responses, voiced her displeasure in terms of Rodgers’ gender: “Why not let the strong woman actually have a strong response for all Republicans?”
By Scott Whitlock | January 28, 2014 | 12:02 PM EST
Previewing Barack Obama's State of the Union on Tuesday, Good Morning America's Jon Karl hyped the President's move to unilaterally act "where he can without Congress." [See video below. MP3 audio here.] Eight years ago, however, ABC hit George W. Bush for being unwilling to compromise.
After noting that Congress has failed to raise the minimum wage, Karl touted, "...The President will announce that he is increasing by nearly $3 an hour the minimum wage on all new federal contracts, acting where he can without Congress." According to Karl, this is an example of Obama "promising to work with Congress where he can but showing there are things he can do on his own, as well." In his report, the journalist failed to wonder if it was the President who should move. In contrast, previewing the January 31, 2006 State of the Union, Charles Gibson asked the liberal Ted Kennedy, "Do you get a sense that this White House is truly willing to compromise on anything?"
Pleasant Surprise: NPR’s Cokie Roberts Challenges Obama Claim About Historic Levels of Partisanship in Washington
By Jeffrey Meyer | January 27, 2014 | 1:30 PM EST NPR reporter Cokie Roberts had some harsh words for President Obama when she appeared as a guest on This Week w/ George Stephanopoulos on Sunday, January 26th. With President Obama scheduled to give his sixth State of the Union speech on Tuesday January 28, the ABC panel had some tough advice for the embattled president.
Roberts, who in the past has made incendiary comments about conservatives, agreed with Fox News' Greta Van Susteren that President Obama cannot continue to blame the GOP for his recent problems. The NPR reporter argued that, “He's now been going back and reading his history and understanding that that's the case. And so that he has to learn to deal with it.” [See video below.]
By Jeffrey Meyer | January 26, 2014 | 6:35 PM EST
Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) appeared on CBS Face the Nation on Sunday morning and was met with a barrage of questions from host Bob Schieffer about his involvement in the government shutdown. Apart from being the victim of Schieffer’s accusations that the Tea Party senator was to blame for the shutdown, it also appears that Mr. Cruz was the victim of editing by CBS.
Based on video from Senator Cruz’s YouTube page and what aired on today’s Face the Nation broadcast, the senator’s comments surrounding President Obama’s “abuse of power” were edited from the program. Instead what aired was a segment that ignored many of the senator’s complaints directed at President Obama. [See the aired and unaired videos below.]
By Jeffrey Meyer | January 26, 2014 | 3:48 PM EST
President Obama is scheduled to give his sixth State of the Union address on January 28, and CBS’s Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer decided to bring on the man who will give the Tea Party response, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX).
Rather than focus primarily on the failures of the Obama Administration over the past 5 years, the veteran CBS reporter chose to use his interview with Cruz as an opportunity to attack the Tea Party favorite and spew White House and Democratic talking points at the Republican. Schieffer began his interview with Cruz by saying that the senator “led the shutdown of the government last fall because the president wouldn't agree to shut down ObamaCare.”
By Brad Wilmouth | January 24, 2014 | 5:33 PM EST
Appearing on Wednesday's The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell, MSNBC.com Executive Editor Richard Wolffe asserted that Tea Partiers want someone to "be annoying and inflammatory" in responding to President Barack Obama's State of the Union Address as the group discussed the news that Utah Republican Senator Mike Lee will give a Tea Party response to the President.
Politico's Restuccia Understates Renewable Energy Production Increase, But Ignores Its Insignificant Slice of All Production
By Tom Blumer | June 21, 2013 | 11:56 PM EDT In a tired Politico item on how President Obama plans to carry out his January State of the Union threat to go around Congress on "climate change" -- no surprise, his moves will be a "power plant clampdown," pouring more money into solar, wind, and geothermal, and micromanaging lamps and refrigerators -- Andrew Restuccia quoted a statistic on the production of certain "renewable" energy sources which actually understated their degree of increase during the past four years. He cited a "60 percent increase in renewable electricity produced from wind, solar and geothermal sources between 2008 and 2012."
The increase is much greater than that. But Restuccia shouldn't gloat. As seen after the jump, those three renewables still represent a pathetically small percentage of all U.S. energy production, and he should have informed his readers of that quite inconvenient fact:
PBS 'Conservative' Contributor Brooks: If GOP's 'Whole Story' Is 'Economic Liberty, You’re Really Not Offering Much'
By Paul Bremmer | February 14, 2013 | 4:03 PM EST Supposedly conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks exposed more of his liberal stripes on Tuesday, telling the Republican Party it needs to rethink its core message. Appearing on PBS’s post-State of the Union coverage, Brooks said he was disappointed with the response delivered by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) because it delivered the typical message of traditional conservative principles.
He continued:
By Mike Ciandella | February 14, 2013 | 1:45 PM EST
All three major networks were awash in water bottle coverage, devoting time in both morning and evening shows to discuss Sen. Marco Rubio drinking out of a water bottle during his response to President Obama’s State of the Union address on February 12.
ABC’s “Good Morning America” and World News,” CBS’s “This Morning” and “Evening News,” and NBC’s “Today” and “Nightly News” all talked about the water bottle, and the attention that it was receiving. Six stories covered the non-issue in the day following Obama’s speech. All three evening news shows ran the instant replay.
By Jeffrey Meyer | February 14, 2013 | 1:30 PM EST
Following President Obama’s call to raise the federal minimum wage to $9/hour in Tuesday's State of the Union address, MSNBC has been eagerly pushing the president’s new-found support for the hike.
Speaking on February 14, host Thomas Roberts conducted a one-sided interview with liberal contributor Goldie Taylor on the supposed need to jack up the minimum wage. As most of Roberts’ segments are, not one guest was brought on to challenge Taylor’s liberal motives, with Roberts introducing the segment as such:
By Clay Waters | February 13, 2013 | 4:51 PM EST
President Obama's State of the Union speech was covered by the New York Times' Mark Landler: "Obama Vows Push To Lift Economy For Middle Class." Landler, a master spinner for the president, marked the Supreme Court upholding Obama-care in embarrassingly syrupy prose in a June 2012 story: "While Mr. Obama will be remembered for bailing out the auto industry, winding down two wars and dispatching Osama bin Laden, health care was his play for history."
On Wednesday, Landler oddly claimed that Obama had signaled "the era of single-minded deficit-cutting should end" (as if it ever began), while chiding the Republican Party's "hard line stance on immigration" and pushing a higher minimum wage as an unmitigated boon for workers, though it may serve to make it even harder for the unemployed to get a job in the first place.