The machinations in Congress over extending the payroll tax cut and unemployment benefits into 2012 could be rendered moot if Democratic congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee gets her way.
Appearing as a guest on Ed Schultz's radio show yesterday, the Texas lawmaker suggested Obama extend both by 60 days through executive order and bypass the GOP-led House. (audio clips after page break)
Sam Stein
By Jack Coleman | December 21, 2011 | 7:26 PM EST
By Noel Sheppard | October 24, 2011 | 7:13 PM EDT
You have to wonder if a day has gone by since the September 7 GOP presidential debate without someone on MSNBC referring to audience members cheering when NBC's Brian Williams asked Texas governor Rick Perry about capital punishment in his state.
Likely the most colorful description of this incident to date occurred on Monday's Hardball when host Chris Matthews said Republicans "look hot and horny for executions out in that Reagan library" (video follows with transcript and commentary):
Sam Stein: Average Americans Who Don't Support Higher Taxes On Rich Are 'Voting Against Their Self-Interest'
By Mark Finkelstein | September 2, 2011 | 8:39 AM EDT
Remember "What's The Matter With Kansas?" That was liberal native Kansan Thomas Frank's extended kvetch over the refusal of average Jayhawkers to engage in class warfare by supporting soak-the-rich policies.
The same mindset was on display on Morning Joe today. The Huffington Post's Sam Stein asserted that the failure of many less-than-rich Americans to support tax increases on the rich amounts to voting "against their own self interest." View video after the jump . . . including the amusing moment when Stein sulks about getting interrrupted by Scarborough.
By Brad Wilmouth | July 29, 2011 | 2:30 AM EDT
Appearing as a guest on Thursday’s Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell on MSNBC, the Huffington Post’s Sam Stein suggested that the budget plan that the House Republican leadership is trying to pass would harm the economy, and, as if the government did not take in lots of tax revenue already, referred to the absence of a tax increase as "no revenues." Stein:
By Geoffrey Dickens | July 11, 2011 | 5:10 PM EDT
Six out of seven reporters, called on by Barack Obama at today's press conference, asked a question of the President that came from the left and/or blamed Speaker John Boehner and the Republicans for standing in the way of a deal on the debt ceiling.
Ben Feller of the AP, began the trend of questioning when he asked how Obama was going to deal with Republicans who were "adamantly" opposed to tax increases. CBS News' Chip Reid followed with "isn't the problem the people who aren't in the room, and in particular Republican presidential candidates and Republican Tea Partiers on the Hill?"
By Noel Sheppard | June 14, 2011 | 6:32 PM EDT
During the 2008 presidential campaign, media members were conspicuously disinterested in one candidate's connection to domestic terrorists as well as his ties to an America-hating reverend.
Following the second debate during this election cycle, the Huffington Post's Sam Stein actually wrote an article about Mitt Romney having knowledge of a hockey game going on at the same time Republican presidential candidates were swapping jabs, and whether that may have violated the rules:
By Noel Sheppard | March 31, 2011 | 11:03 AM EDT
Following its controversial decision to ban Andrew Breitbart from publishing articles at its front page, the Huffington Post has found itself in quite a pickle now that one of its regular contributors, comedian Bill Maher, made disgustingly vulgar references to former Alaska governor Sarah Palin.
As NewsBusters previously reported, Breitbart made some comments about President Obama's former green czar Van Jones that precipitated the following hypocritical statement from HuffPo spokesman Mario Ruiz last Thursday (readers are warned of vulgar content in full article):
By Geoffrey Dickens | March 2, 2011 | 6:25 PM EST
Chris Matthews, once again, abandoned any notion he was serious about establishing a new tone of political civility in the wake of the Tucson shooting, as on Wednesday's Hardball he compared former Speaker of the House and possible GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich to a terrorist as he screeched "He looks like a car bomber" and even described him in demonic terms, adding: "He's got that crazy Mephistophelian grin of his. He looks like he loves torturing."
The following Matthews rants came during a discussion about possible GOP presidential contenders with the Chicago Tribune's Clarence Page and The Huffington Post's Sam Stein on the March 2 Hardball:
(video, audio and transcript after the jump)
By Noel Sheppard | October 8, 2010 | 10:54 AM EDT 
There was almost a full-fledged panic attack on Thursday's "Hardball" as three devout liberal media members fretted over the possibility that Tea Party success at the polls next month could make the GOP more conservative.
Horrors!
So worried about this was MSNBC's Chris Matthews that he opined at the end of the segment, "At some point, they`ll become not the party of the elephant but the party of the barking dogs as the cars go by" (video follows with commentary and full transcript at end of the article):
By Geoffrey Dickens | August 23, 2010 | 7:27 PM EDT
Chris Matthews bizarrely accused Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of using code language to appeal to the Birther crowd for saying, on Sunday's Meet the Press, that "The President says he's a Christian. I take him at his word." The phrasing of "take him at his word" sent the MSNBC host, on Monday's Hardball, into a rage as he charged McConnell's statement was a "Pitch perfect, dog whistle to the haters."
In fact, Matthews devoted much of his show to "The right wing's attempt to de-Americanize the President" as he invited on Newsweek's Howard Fineman and the Huffington Post's Sam Stein, in the first segment, to dissect what they thought was some sort of nefarious strategy on the parts of McConnell, Reverend Franklin Graham, Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck to ride a "message of fear" to victory in November.
Matthews began his opening segment by attacking McConnell for failing to denounce any sort of conspiracy theories as he claimed: "The Republican leader of the Senate played Birther politics with abandon." He even brought on Fineman -- who proudly claimed that since he used to work in McConnell's home state of Kentucky and therefore "understands it" -- to explain to viewers that the GOP senator was trying to get Rand Paul elected by playing to a "nativist appeal" that "really works big time" in that state.
However McConnell wasn't the only target of Matthews' ire as the conversation soon turned towards Rush Limbaugh:
Schultz Slams ‘Wicked Witch’ Schlafly; Winstead: Heidi Harris ‘Teabagging Carol Brady,’ Schlafly ‘Empties Bowels Thru Mouth'
By Brad Wilmouth | July 31, 2010 | 2:33 PM EDT 
On Friday’s The Ed Show on MSNBC, host Ed Schultz trashed conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly, repeatedly mispronouncing her name as "Schafly," for linking being a single woman and having a greater likelihood of depending on government programs, as she noted at a recent GOP fundraiser that 70 percent of single women voted for Barack Obama. At the top of the show, Schultz teased: "I`ve got some choice words for the ‘Wicked Witch of the Midwest’ tonight – and that`s what she is." He later plugged before a commercial break: "Speaking of ‘Psycho Talkers,’ ‘Wicked Witch of the Midwest’ Phyllis Schafly [sic] got off her broomstick long enough to take a shot at unmarried women of America."
Later in the show, after conservative talk radio host Heidi Harris had appeared in a segment to defend Schlafly, Daily Show co-creator and regular guest Lizz Winstead appeared for the "Club Ed" segment and bashed Harris as "that teabagging Carol Brady," advising Schultz that "you have got to slam her down when she is absolutely wrong." After the Daily Show co-creator went on to charge that Schlafly "can empty her bowels through her mouth and just exhaust horrifying crap onto the universe," an impressed Schultz laughed and cheered her on as he seemed to refer to Winstead’s rant declaring, "That’s great stuff":
By Jeff Poor | July 27, 2010 | 7:45 PM EDT
UPDATE: HuffPo's Jason Linkins offers explanation (see bottom)
Maybe this is the way former Hearst Newspapers columnist and so-called dean of the White House Press Corps Helen Thomas would have wanted it.
Although Thomas' old seat in the White House press briefing room hasn't officially been designated for a particular outlet, and this might be wishful thinking on the part of the Huffington Post's Sam Stein, the White House correspondent for website, took the seat for the July 27 briefing with White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs.
Stein's questions from the front row dealt with the possibility of President Barack Obama making recess appointment, in dealing with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and what he deemed the "lethargic pace" of judicial confirmations. Stein then followed up with four additional questions for his piece posted on the Huffington Post later that afternoon.
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