How's this for intellectual diversity? The panel on Monday's AC360 Later included three NYC liberals and was unanimous in support of same-sex marriage. The topic was the spat between Liz and Mary Cheney.
"I don't think you can actually respect somebody to whom you want to deny the most basic rights," declared The Daily Beast's Peter Beinart, who also teaches journalism at the City University of New York.
CNN's senior legal analyst thinks that any further investigation into Benghazi is looking at a "non-story" since "there is nothing there, in terms of a scandal."
On Thursday's AC360 Later, Jeffrey Toobin scoffed at Republican efforts to gain access to more Benghazi witnesses and CIA operatives. "This is a non-story. Benghazi was a tragedy. It's not a scandal. Republicans are going to investigate this until the end of the Obama administration. They will find nothing, because there's nothing to be found there," he insisted.
CNN's legal analyst Jeff Toobin thinks Justice Antonin Scalia is stuck in the 1950s on social issues but Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is up to date with today's citizens.
The entire Court is a "deeply political institution," Toobin admitted, yet his descriptions for the conservative Scalia and the liberal Ginsburg differed significantly. Scalia is "a 1950s social conservative," he insisted on Tuesday's AC360 Later, while Ginsburg "is a woman who is very much in tune with the modern world."
CNN's senior legal analyst reacted to George Zimmerman's acquittal on Saturday by tweeting that Trayvon Martin "got the death penalty for buying Skittles in a hoodie."
"I understand it, but still..." CNN's Jeffrey Toobin enigmatically added. He was joined by CNN host Piers Morgan in outrage. "I find it very hard to accept that it's 'lawful' to shoot an unarmed 17yr-old boy dead as he walks home," Morgan tweeted Sunday morning.
CNN's senior legal analyst thinks there's too much "hysteria" over the IRS scandal and that it really may not have been that big of a story to begin with. He argued thus on the 11 a.m. ET hour of Thursday's Newsroom.
CNN's Jeffrey Toobin's spin went as follows: "the IRS is required by law to investigate these organizations," and "it's not clear that there were liberal organizations applying, certainly, in the numbers that the Tea Party were," and "A lot of these organizations that are complaining wound up getting approved for 501(c)(4) status. So what are their damages?" Ergo, "we need to know a lot more, but we need perhaps a little less hysteria, too."
CNN's Christiane Amanpour and Jeffrey Toobin continued to push for Guantanamo Bay to be closed on Thursday's 10 p.m. ET hour of Anderson Cooper 360. "It's just not American," Amanpour insisted.
Amanpour, CNN's chief international correspondent, knocked the "roughty-toughty Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld decided no Geneva Conventions" for the detainees. Toobin, CNN's senior legal analyst, challenged the law passed by Congress mandating that Guantanamo be kept open. "That doesn't mean it was right," he said of its bipartisan passage.
On Friday's Anderson Cooper 360, hours after CNN finally covered the trial of abortionist Kermit Gosnell for the first time in weeks, CNN's legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin scoffed at the notion of a liberal media bias responsible for the cover-up.
"Well, the people making those criticisms by and large are conservatives, who are saying the liberal media is trying to protect abortion rights by not showing this horror show. I don't buy that at all," Toobin asserted.
CNN's own legal analyst scoffed at CNN's notion that 75 Republicans supporting legal gay marriage is a "big turning point" for the party. Anchor Ashleigh Banfield did her best to drum up the matter on Tuesday, for the network that has repeatedly shown a bias favoring gay marriage.
"Next, a big turning point in the Republican party. 70 high profile Republicans just signed a brief supporting gay marriage," Banfield touted. "I really disagree with the premise that this is a lot of people," responded CNN's legal analyst Jeff Toobin.
The British-born CNN anchor named Piers Morgan took another swipe at America Wednesday.
Discussing the options President Obama has to enact stricter gun laws, Morgan said the Supreme Court has been "dangerous" concerning this issue (video follows with transcript and commentary):
CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin appeared on the public-radio talk show Smiley & West over the weekend and gave his election pick: "You know, I don’t think this election is going to be all that close. I’m sorry, you know,, in my newsman hat, you know, we always want drama, we always want chaos and good stories. I think Obama is going to win this election narrowly, but comfortably. I don’t think we’re in for a long night."
When co-host Tavis Smiley asked about the talk of Superstorm Sandy being politicized, Toobin insisted "Absolutely, we should politicize them" to smack those people who think government is evil, and those global-warming skeptics should not be given equal time:
NPR’s Terry Gross brought on CNN judicial analyst Jeffrey Toobin on Monday to discuss his new book on the Supreme Court (called The Oath) for 44 minutes of her program Fresh Air. Toobin proclaimed that Barack Obama is the conservative when it comes to the Supreme Court, and John Roberts is the radical revolutionary. This is the same Toobin who complained overturning ObamaCare would be "judicial activism."
Toobin also claimed with a straight face (or at least an ungiggly voice) that Roberts voted to uphold ObamaCare to pave the way for more conservative decisions, to insulate the court from being found as political in the future -- as if liberals won't denounce every conservative decision as political. Toobin also continued his tradition of bashing Clarence Thomas as "way out there" on the right-wing fringes.
On Tuesday, New York’s Daily News carried the headline “Bill O’Reilly admits he ‘may be an idiot’ for wrongly predicting Supreme Court’s health care decision.” Meena Hart Duerson began with snark: “Bill O'Reilly and his critics may finally have something to agree on: the talk show host admitted Monday he ‘may be an idiot’ for wrongly predicting the Supreme Court’s decision on Obamacare.”
But O’Reilly’s guess on March 26 – 5 to 4 to overturn – was exactly where many pundits would have placed their bets. Has the Daily News ever noticed CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin predicting it might have gone eight to one in Obama’s favor on The Situation Room March 23, with even Scalia and Alito joining with Kennedy and Roberts in siding with Obama? No.