By Tom Blumer | November 24, 2015 | 9:49 PM EST

There are plenty of problems with the government's "no-fly list," and especially the plans by some congressmen and senators to abuse it. That said, it appears, almost three years later, to have gotten one name right.

In late 2012 and early 2013, leftists like Chris Hayes at MSNBC, Glenn Greenwald and Kevin Drum at Mother Jones were upset that Saadiq Long, a U.S. Air Force veteran who was living in Qatar, had been put on the no-fly list. After making a stink, Long's name was apparently removed so he could fly into Oklahoma to see his ailing mother, only to see his no-fly listing reinstated so he couldn't leave. He returned to Qatar, but only after taking a bus down to Mexico City and flying from there. End of story? Hardly, as PJ Media's Patrick Poole reports:

By Tom Johnson | November 21, 2015 | 11:56 AM EST

President Obama deserves high marks for his ISIS policy only if you’re grading on a curve and the other students are Republicans who “can't be bothered to take any of this seriously,” suggested Kevin Drum in a Thursday post.

Drum charged that GOPers “blather about Obama being weak, but when you ask them for their plans you just get nonsense…Obama's ISIS strategy has [not] been golden. But Republicans make him look like Alexander the Great. They treat the whole subject like a plaything, a useful cudgel during a presidential campaign. Refugees! Kurds! Radical Islam! We need to be tougher!...That isn't leadership. It barely even counts as coherent thought. It's just playground jeering.”

By Tom Johnson | October 31, 2015 | 6:34 PM EDT

Even though Mother Jones blogger Kevin Drum describes Charles Krauthammer as a “hardcore conservative,” he suggested in a Friday post that Krauthammer is too enlightened to be on the same page as most right-wingers regarding Obama White House scandals.

When Krauthammer argued recently against the effort to impeach IRS commissioner John Koskinen, he commented that on matters including the IRS/Tea Party flap and the Benghazi attack, Republicans, despite not persuading the majority of the public of Obama-administration “malfeasance,” had had “the facts and the argument” on their side. Drum wrote, “Does [Krauthammer] really believe this? Or does he know it's baloney but figures he needs some kind of acceptable cover to get Republicans off their Ahab-like zeal for investigating nothingburgers?” According to Drum, Dr. K does indeed understand that it’s baloney.

By Tom Johnson | October 14, 2015 | 10:27 AM EDT

For nearly three decades, Ben Carson was the head of pediatric neurosurgery at one of the world’s best hospitals. To MSNBC panelist Barnicle, however, Carson is a “political nut-boy” who reminds him of a patient at a certain type of hospital.

In a Monday Daily Beast column, Barnicle opined that Carson is “out there on the fringe talking nonsense in a soft, nonthreatening manner that is quite similar to the voice level heard among so many sitting sadly by themselves today in Day Rooms of mental institutions, off in a corner, wearing paper slippers, slowly eating apple sauce, unaware that nobody is listening.”

By Tom Johnson | September 13, 2015 | 1:23 PM EDT

Regarding the mainstream media’s superficial coverage of religion, is the sticking point excessive evenhandedness or simple ignorance? Two lefty bloggers differed Friday on that issue.

First, Paul Waldman wrote on The Washington Post’s Plum Line blog that reporters don’t like asking the presidential candidates “about the specifics of their faith and how it might influence their day-to-day decision making…because they’re worried that it will come off sounding like criticism of the candidates’ beliefs.” Kevin Drum of Mother Jones, however, countered that journalists worry not about appearing biased but rather about getting overmatched by politicians who are well-versed in Scripture, exegesis, and so on.

By Tom Johnson | August 29, 2015 | 1:55 PM EDT

On Friday, Washington Monthly's Ed Kilgore and Kevin Drum of Mother Jones contended that the conservative war on political correctness is a tempest in a teapot, and that being politically correct is pretty much synonymous with not being a bigoted jerk.

By Tom Johnson | August 6, 2015 | 2:30 PM EDT

Imagine an Abortion Pride Day parade in which women march while pushing empty strollers and baby carriages. That’s not far off from what Mother Jones pundit Drum recommended in a Wednesday post.

Drum suggested that women who’ve had an abortion and believe they made the right choice ought to say so publicly, and that they should view out gays and lesbians as role models in that regard: “As long as gays stayed largely closeted, it was easy for most people to think there weren't very many of them…[but] as more and more gays came out, that view was forced to fade away…The same is true of abortion…When it turns out your next-door neighbor had an abortion? Or the waitress at the diner you go to for lunch? Or your doctor? Then it gets a little harder to think of it as something unusual and sort of icky. It's just something people do.”

By Tom Johnson | February 5, 2015 | 9:24 PM EST

Kevin Drum of Mother Jones claims that Obama’s executive action was meant to “gain Latino support for Democrats and provoke an insane counterreaction from Republicans” and concludes that Obama “succeeded brilliantly on both counts.” Meanwhile, Ed Kilgore of the Washington Monthly notes that “the Republican Party was actually competitive among Latino voters a decade ago,” but adds, “Now that it’s obvious the party has chosen to…bow to the nativist impulses of the conservative ‘base,’ the question is how much worse can it get?”

By Tom Johnson | January 10, 2015 | 1:54 PM EST

Drum, of Mother Jones, suggests that Obama doesn’t have much competition for the “most liberal” title, given that the only other post-LBJ Democratic presidents have been the “relatively conservative” Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter. He claims that Obama definitely isn’t “some kind of wild-eyed lefty.”

By Tom Johnson | November 24, 2014 | 10:11 PM EST

One blogger argued that media outlets which took the story seriously should “spend the next three-plus years publishing articles [or] airing pieces” telling the public that it was “a cynical and spiteful lie from the beginning.”

By Tom Johnson | November 22, 2014 | 11:44 AM EST

The Mother Jones blogger contends that Obama’s immigration action “is politically pretty brilliant. It unifies Democrats; wrecks the Republican agenda in Congress; cements the loyalty of Hispanics; and presents the American public with a year of Republican candidates spitting xenophobic fury during primary season. If you're President Obama, what's not to like?”

By Tom Johnson | November 7, 2014 | 12:36 AM EST

The Mother Jones pundit writes that Attkisson used to be “a pretty good, hard-nosed investigative reporter,” but adds that as she developed ties to conservative activists, “her reporting became…detached from reality....Her descent seems to be complete.”