Joining host Chris Hayes on Wednesday’s pre-Thanksgiving edition of MSNBC’s All In, MSNBC political analyst and former Democratic Vermont Governor Howard Dean tried to trash the Republican Party as nothing but “an authoritarian party” “for a very long time” due to their policy positions on voter I.D. and abortion to name a few.
Tea Parties
Howard Dean: GOP ‘Is an Authoritarian Party’; Has Had ‘Strong Authoritarian Bent’ ‘for a Very Long Time’
By Curtis Houck | November 27, 2015 | 4:36 PM EST 
By Matthew Balan | November 10, 2015 | 6:12 PM EST
On Tuesday's The Lead, CNN's Jake Tapper zeroed in on University of Missouri Professor Melissa Click's attack on a student journalist, after he tried to cover anti-racism protests on campus. Tapper bluntly stated, "I have to say that I found this video shocking — not just this mob of students trying to intimidate this student journalist — but they had faculty help!" The anchor later asked Professor Tom Warhover, who also teaches at Mizzou, "Do you think she should be stripped of her courtesy opportunities?" Warhover replied, "I think that's probably a reasonable response."
By Bruce Bookter | October 26, 2015 | 6:29 PM EDT
It was a Friday on local sports radio in Washington, DC. The last broadcast before a Redskins game. So, naturally, ESPN 980’s Tony Kornheiser decided to have political journalist and editor Howard Fineman of the Huffington Post on to talk about Paul Ryan and the Tea Party. Kornheiser, a long time Washington Post sports columnist before moving to radio, wondered: “Are they like ISIS trying to establish a Caliphate here?” Fineman: “Yes! Yes! That’s a very good analogy! Without the violence obviously, but yes, they are a rejectionist front.”
By Matthew Balan | October 23, 2015 | 8:56 PM EDT
ABC, CBS, and NBC's evening newscasts on Friday all failed to cover the Justice Department announcing that it would be ending its investigation into the IRS's targeting of conservative groups. The Big Three networks' news program did find time to air reporting on the top Google searches for Halloween costumes, the fewer number of turkeys available for upcoming Thanksgiving dinners, and the controversy over the first bear hunt in Florida in 20 years.
By Tom Johnson | October 20, 2015 | 9:54 PM EDT
Daily Kos writer Denise Oliver-Velez has two plans related to New York state’s primary election next April: vote for Democrats, and give Ben Carson the finger. Carson won’t see it, but that’s not the point -- it’s a therapeutic gesture.
In a Sunday screed, Oliver-Velez, an adjunct professor of anthropology and women’s studies at SUNY New Paltz, charged that Carson “has become the antithesis of the civil rights struggle, directly attacking the gains we have made and are fighting to hold onto…He is not the first black man or woman used by those whose foot is on our necks to co-sign their ideology and practices, and he won't be the last. Nor is he the first to profit from it.”
By Curtis Houck | October 8, 2015 | 3:07 PM EDT
To the surprise of no one, MSNBC ran to find the nearest token Republicans it could after shocking news that House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) dropped out of Speaker of the House race and once such person was MSNBC political analyst and former 2008 McCain campaign adviser Steve Schmidt, who railed against the GOP for “hunting heretics” and not “converts.”
By Curtis Houck | September 25, 2015 | 3:31 PM EDT
Mere moments into House Speaker John Boehner’s press conference on Friday discussing his resignation on October 30, the “big three” of ABC, CBS, and NBC were quick to chastise conservative House members on Boehner’s “far right flank” that compose the “no compromise crowd” and “some grassroots conservatives who happened to be elected members of the House.”
By Curtis Houck | September 1, 2015 | 7:22 AM EDT
During Monday’s The Kelly File on the Fox News Channel (FNC), host Megyn Kelly and The Five co-host Dana Perino excoriated the liberal media for committing a double standard in their portrayal of the tea party, which they called racist, compared to the Black Lives Matter movement. Kelly noted the media reluctance to characterize the latter even after protesters chanted that police officers are “pigs in a blanket” who should be “fr[ied] like bacon.”
By Tom Blumer | August 30, 2015 | 11:47 PM EDT
Miami Herald sportwriter and columnist Greg Cote, whose career has entered or is about to enter its third decade, seems to have incorporated a sideline into his work: glib, ignorant political commentary.
One such example surfaced at the end of his August 25 Random Evidence blog post. Apparently, Cote believes that anyone who has ever received any kind of government benefit or has made use of a government service at any time in their life is a flaming hypocrite if they believe that Uncle Sam and other public entities should be able to survive on less money than they currently spend. They're also hypocrites if they believe that the federal government has become far too intrusive in our everyday affairs and threatening to the fundamental freedoms identified in the naton's Constitution. Greg, who clearly should stick to sportwriting, has convinced himself that such people are "anti-government":
By Tom Blumer | July 31, 2015 | 11:11 PM EDT
On Thursday, Curtis Houck at NewsBusters noted how the Big Three networks and the two leading Spanish-language networks ignored the latest developments in the now 813 day-old IRS targeting scandal. As usual, only Fox News covered a congressional hearing on, in Fox's words, "the lack of accountability following the IRS targeting of tea party and other groups" as well as a federal judge's threat "to hold (IRS Commissioner John Koskinen and Justice Department attorneys in contempt of court for failing to produce status reports and Lois Lerner e-mails."
Not that this excuses the non-coverage, but if these outfits were relying as subscribers on the Associated Press to make sure that the contempt threat made by U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan got the visibility it deserved so they would be aware of it and use it, the wire service's Stephen Ohlemacher let them down — and, I would argue, deliberately so.
By Tom Blumer | July 22, 2015 | 11:18 PM EDT
Earlier today, Geoffrey Dickens at NewsBusters noted how the Big Three morning network news shows on NBC, ABC, and CBS failed to cover President Barack Obama's denial that the Internal Revenue Service ever went after Tea Party and other conservative groups in his appearance on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Specifically Obama said that "it turned out no ... the truth of the matter is there was not some big conspiracy there ... the real scandal around the I.R.S. right now is that it has been so poorly funded."
Following the lead of the Associated Press, whose Josh Lederman completely ignored Obama load of IRS-related horse manure, the same crowd which spent years screaming about how "Bush Lied" about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq — he didn't lie, period; even the left has to agree, thanks to the New York Times, that it's no longer arguable — has remained notoriously silent about Obama's claim.
By Curtis Houck | June 26, 2015 | 1:04 AM EDT
On Thursday night, the major broadcast networks ignored a new development in the IRS scandal that the agency erased 422 backup tapes and in turn destroyed 24,000 e-mails of embattled former official Lois Lerner. With ABC, CBS, and NBC on the sidelines, the Fox News Channel’s Special Report offered a full report on Thursday’s House Oversight Committee hearing concerning the multi-year scandal. Bret Baier informed viewers that there was “new information about thousands more e-mails in the IRS targeting scandal destroyed during the investigation.”