Today is the first Monday in October and with it the beginning of the Supreme Court's new term. For the occasion, Politico's Josh Gerstein gave readers "5 cases to watch as Supreme Court term begins," using rather loaded language in the story to give a heavy liberal spin to the docket preview.
Josh Gerstein
By Tom Blumer | August 19, 2015 | 11:18 PM EDT
You rubes. Don't you understand that the entire problem Hillary Clinton is facing over her use of a private server to process government communications is the fault of thousands upon thousands of people who don't know how to classify documents?
That's essentially the argument Hillary Clinton's spinmeisters are now employing. This evening, Josh Gerstein at the Politico was all too ready to relay such arguments, even to the point of cleaning up what one of her defenders said to advance the cause.
By Tom Blumer | September 24, 2014 | 9:43 PM EDT
The Politico's Josh Gerstein wants readers not to have a problem with President Barack Obama singing the praises of American exceptionalism when in front of U.S. audiences but deep-sixing it when speaking at the United Nations. Though Obama has almost always avoided actually using the E-word, he has recenlly taken to speaking of this nation's "unique" abilities and capabilities, and for some time has described the U.S. as "the one indispensable nation."
But Gerstein, in his column today, indicated that it's okay that "Obama watered down his noble-America rhetoric" at the U.N. today. Oh, and in the Politico reporter's fantasy world, Obama's back-and-forth foreign policy postures — it's hardly accurate to call them genuine "positions" — are really no different than what we saw under George W. Bush. Excerpts follow the jump (bolds and numbered tags are mine):
By Tom Blumer | August 29, 2014 | 1:06 PM EDT
Politico's Josh Gerstein was in top keister-covering mode last night in dealing with President Barack Obama's latest stated indication that U.S. foreign policy is adrift.
To him, the President's admission that “We don’t have a strategy yet” was just an "awkward choice of words" and an "inartful phrase." (By the way, over six years after after one of Obama's flaks first used it to defend the then-candidate's flip-flop on DC's strict gun ban, something he originally believed was constitutional until the Supreme Court's ruling in the Heller decision, "inartful" is still not a recognized word. Yet its use continues to spread.) Excerpts from Gerstein's grief-stricken groaner follow the jump (bolds and numbered tags are mine):
By Tom Blumer | January 29, 2014 | 9:45 PM EST
In his Tuesday night State of the Union speech, President Barack Obama made the following pledge: "In the coming weeks, I will issue an Executive Order requiring federal contractors to pay their federally-funded employees a fair wage of at least $10.10 an hour – because if you cook our troops’ meals or wash their dishes, you shouldn’t have to live in poverty."
One would have every reason to believe from Obama's statement that the change will take effect quickly once the EO is issued — but it won't. Additionally, one would have every reason to believe that when it does take effect, it will increase the pay of anyone currently employed on federal contract work at a pay rate of under $10.10 per hour — but it won't do that either. Somehow, those "little" problems escaped "fact checkers" Josh Gerstein and Darren Samuelsohn at the Politico, who, while they did catch other problems with the President's statement, swallowed a clearly false claim about its long-term impact:
By Tom Blumer | November 12, 2013 | 6:18 PM EST
Apparently appalled that President Obama clearly needs outside help to come to the realization that something must be done to fix the mess resulting from his "keep your plan" guarantee, Josh Gerstein at the Politico opened a Monday afternoon report by claiming that "President Bill Clinton — the man President Barack Obama once dubbed his 'Secretary of Explaining Stuff' — once again has some explaining of his own to do with the Obama White House."
Hmm. It would appear that Obama has some fixing to do, and may not have been interested in doing anything to genuinely address the mess he, Kathleen Sebelius, the Affordable Care Act, and thousands of pages of restrictive regulations have wrought. Excerpts from Gerstein's grievous report follow the jump (bolds are mine):
By Tom Blumer | July 21, 2013 | 6:22 PM EDT
The TalkLeft blog noted last night that the American Civil Liberties Union, after encouraging U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to pursue civil rights charges against George Zimmerman the day after he was acquitted in the death of Trayvon Martin, reversed course just four days later.
Though it's no longer available at its national web site, the Associated Press ran the organization's press release. Various searches at the AP's national web site indicate that there has been no coverage of the organization's reversal. Several center-right blogs have noted the reversal, but no one in the establishment press besides Josh Gerstein at the Politico, where stories the rest of the establishment press would prefer to ignore tend to go and all too often die, has noted it. So did the organization have a change of heart? Or did it attempt to manipulate its media exposure with a politically correct initial press release followed by a legally and constitutionally correct reversal it hopes few will notice?
By Tom Blumer | July 3, 2013 | 11:03 PM EDT
Josh Gerstein at the Politico is on the opposite of a roll today. This afternoon (noted at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), Gerstein was barely done covering how "U.S. eases away from Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi" when the military announced that Morsi had been deposed by the military, ultimately in favor of, according to the Associated Press, a temporary "government of civilian technocrats."
This evening, he's trying to position Obama as a great thinker weighing his options instead of as the guy who has been on the wrong side of freedom and democracy ever since Morsi assumed dictatorial powers in late November of last year, which should be brought up every time someone falsely claims that Morse headed a legitimate, democratically elected government (bolds are mine):
By Tom Blumer | July 3, 2013 | 4:57 PM EDT
Apparently, one pathetic last-minute speech by Eqypt's Mohammed Morsi was sufficient to convince President Barack Obama, who has spent several days and untold amounts of worldwide capital defending the Muslim Brotherhood leader's staying on the job in the face of what may have been the largest pro-democracy demonstrations in human history.
The Politico frantically tried to run interference for Obama opportunistic change of heart today, running an item which was apparently called "U.S. Eases Away from Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi." The item was up so briefly that it was quickly replaced, while the headline just mentioned still remains in the browser window's title bar:
Politico's Gerstein Assumes GOP and Other Efforts to Get at the Truth Are About 'Claim(ing) a Trophy Firing'
By Tom Blumer | May 19, 2013 | 9:40 PM EDT When a reporter makes an assertion about someone else's beliefs or motivations, he or she is supposed to offer something up as evidence, say a direct quote, something that person has written, or even something someone else close to him or her has said.
Politico's Josh Gerstein offered nothing of the sort in his coverage of Eric Holder's "you can't touch me" attitude, though he provides plenty of evidence to support my characterization of Holder's outlook. Gerstein, without a shred of support, wrote the following in describing what he believes Republicans and conservatives are trying to accomplish in pursuing the myriad scandals in the Obama administration which have burst forth during the past two weeks, along with others, including but not limited to Operation Fast and Furious, which occurred during the Obama administration's first term (bolds are mine throughout this post):
By Tim Graham | April 23, 2013 | 7:56 AM EDT
On Friday, Matt Sheffield and Bob Owens and other conservative bloggers spread the news that Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev sent pro-Obama tweets out on Election Night, retweeting one that said "Barack you my dawg" and hailing how “america is impervious to the f--kery #justforthisoneday.”
Speaking of impervious, Politico reporter Josh Gerstein reported on Monday that "The Boston Marathon bombing suspects’ geopolitical leanings are still largely a mystery, and so is their American political outlook, after a review of records in this city where they lived for the last several years."
Politico Misses Kagan '09 Statement on DOMA Story: 'There Is No Federal Constitutional Right To Same-Sex Marriage'
By Matt Vespa | March 28, 2013 | 12:52 PM EDT So, Politico jumped the shark on gay marriage yesterday in reporting that Justice Elena Kagan that she had a ‘gotcha’ moment during yesterday’s hearings on the Defense of Marriage Act.
But a real ‘gotcha’ moment would have been if Politico did their homework and resurrected Kagan’s past comments about gay marriage from 2009, when she was awaiting confirmation to the post of solicitor general and she insisted in the answer to a questionnaire that “there is no federal constitutional right to same-sex marriage.”
In Elena Kagan's DOMA 'Gotcha' Moment, Jennifer Epstein and Josh Gerstein gushed that: