By Noel Sheppard | January 31, 2010 | 4:42 PM EST

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Sunday that CNN's Larry King does a better job interrogating his guests than Justice Department officials did with Christmas Day bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab after his capture.

Speaking with John King on CNN's "State of the Union" about whether terrorist trials should be held in civil courts, McConnell said, "What we need to do is deny these people a show trial."

He continued, "We need to proceed to interrogate them, which you couldn't do obviously with the Christmas bomber."

Then came the zinger, "I mean, Larry King would have a more thorough interrogation of one of his witnesses than the Christmas bomber had by the Justice Department" (video embedded below the fold with partial transcript, h/t Politico):

By Matthew Balan | January 8, 2010 | 4:10 PM EST

Left-wing talker Stephanie Miller inaccurately claimed on CNN’s Larry King Live on Thursday that former President Clinton “put the Cole bombers in jail.” Miller also predictably blasted former President Bush for not “taking responsibility for 9/11,” in contrast to President Obama’s recent acceptance of responsibility for intelligence failures prior to the attempted underwear bombing on Christmas [audio clip from the segment available here].
                   
Host Larry King first turned to the leftist talk show host during a panel discussion which began 12 minutes into the 9 pm Eastern hour: “Stephanie, the President said the buck stops with him. Was that a good move today?” Miller immediately made her full Bush Derangement Syndrome apparent in her response:

MILLER: Well, it’s certainly a different move than we ever heard in the Bush administration. I never heard anybody taking responsibility for 9/11, for Katrina. I thought he stepped to the plate. And I couldn’t disagree with Paul Bremer [who appeared in the previous segment] more, Larry. I think he [Obama] is prosecuting the exact same way President Bush prosecuted the shoe bomber, Richard Reid, as a criminal. You don’t want to make them holy warriors. You want to prosecute them as what they are and that’s criminals, and that’s what Clinton did when he put the previous- you know, Cole bombers in jail, instead of letting them get away, like Osama bin Laden.
By P.J. Gladnick | January 5, 2010 | 8:13 AM EST
It's New Year's Eve and you have the choice of ringing in 2010 by partying or watching Larry King. Most normal people would choose the former option but for the very few who watched Larry King that evening, they were treated to quite a surprise as they watched the show which was guest hosted by Candy Crowley (Was Larry ringing in the New Year at Nate 'n' Al's?).

The surprise came in the form of Liberal Marc Lamont Hill gaving a rather harsh political assessment of President Obama.  Here is just a taste of what Hill had to say about Obama, followed by more criticism in the transcript below the fold:

He's absolutely overplayed his hand. He kind of came in arriving the -- riding the wave of his own awesomeness. ...The fact that he had done 110 interviews and 110 talks on health care and the American people weren't persuaded, it showed that people like him, but they didn't find his argument persuasive. It was almost as if he said if they just see my face one more time and listen to me one more time, they'll be convinced...

By Matthew Balan | December 15, 2009 | 5:57 PM EST

CNN’s Larry King equated efforts against further regulation of the banking industry to letting the mentally ill run their psych wards on his program on Monday. King pressed conservative columnist S. E. Cupp: “Banks are lobbying against a bill to tighten regulatory controls. Are you going to let the inmates run the asylum? You don’t think we should regulate banks?” [audio clips from the segment available here]

The CNN host moderated a panel discussion on the economy during the first segments of the program. The panel surprisingly leaned to the right on economic issues. Besides Cupp, King had Penn Gilette and Larry Elder, both libertarians, and liberal former Clinton administration official Robert Reich. After the host used the “inmates run the asylum” idiom in his question, the columnist first answered that “we do need regulation, but it’s putting them in a really tough spot.” King interrupted with a blunt one-word question: “So?”
By Lachlan Markay | December 10, 2009 | 1:50 PM EST
Despite all the campaign assurances that he would see the Afghan war effort through, liberals are incensed that Obama is following through on his pledge to, you know, win. The latest lefty to excoriate the president for pursuing America's enemies abroad is veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas, who today lamented that Obama must now be dubbed a "war president."

"Obama should remember his own battle cry and tell the hawks: 'Yes, we can,' " Thomas wrote today in her syndicated column for Hearst Newspapers. Maybe he should also remember his insistence that Afghanistan "is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity."

And he has remembered those wise words. But his supporters, who flocked to the "good war" cause as way to contrast Democratic national security efforts with the supposedly ill-intentioned Iraq war--and rip on George Bush in the process--have exhausted the political usefulness of Afghanistan, and are now calling for withdrawal.
By Matthew Balan | December 2, 2009 | 3:30 PM EST

Larry King, CNN Host; & Michael Moore, Director | NewsBusters.orgCNN’s Larry King carried water for President Obama’s move to send more troops to Afghanistan during an interview of Michael Moore on early Wednesday morning. King later shifted further to the left, asking Moore if he agreed with Jesse Ventura’s call for a new draft and a “war tax” and quoting from Bob Herbert of the New York Times, who labeled the Afghan war a “tragic mistake.”

The CNN host interviewed the famous left-wing director for the first two segments of his program. Near the end of the first segment, King sought Moore’s take on something from his interview of Ventura, whom he interviewed the night before: “Jesse Ventura said last night- and he agrees with your position, by the way- that we should consider bringing back the draft and we should have a war tax so that people suffer if we’re all going to pay a price for this. What do you think?”

The leftist one-upped his celebrity counterpart: “There would be no increase in the troops if there was a draft and if people had to pay for it. I actually have proposed bringing back the draft now for some years, but only draft the children of those in the upper five percent income bracket, because if the wealthy have to send their kids over to Iraq or Afghanistan, trust me, there won’t be many wars.”

The host quoted from Herbert in his last question to Moore: “Bob Herbert, writing in The New York Times today, called this a ‘tragic mistake,’ and then he quotes Dwight David Eisenhower...Eisenhower said, ‘I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can and as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, and its stupidity.’And then he said- this will impress you, I think- Eisenhower: ‘Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.’ That’s from a four star general and a president.”

By Noel Sheppard | November 17, 2009 | 12:23 AM EST

Naomi Wolf on Monday accused former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin of being part of a "cabal" involving George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Karl Rove.

The feminist author and political consultant made this accusation on CNN's "Larry King Live."

Fortunately, former Bush adviser Mary Matalin was there to contest Wolf's absurdities:

[T]his is why people think liberals are such fringies. I mean you -- you run around saying that she's such a dope, but you were all duped by the dope. That's what you've said about George Bush, too.

In the end, the paranoia on display, as well as the unchecked hatred for Palin, was nothing less than remarkable -- but Matalin was there to bring some sanity to the discussion (video embedded below the fold with transcript, h/t Story Balloon):

By Matthew Balan | November 13, 2009 | 3:30 PM EST

Larry King, CNN Anchor; & Al Gore, Former US Vice President | NewsBusters.orgJust over a week after using the term “far right” three times in a row in one night, CNN’s Larry King used the term “right wing” three times during an interview of Al Gore on his program on Thursday. King first questioned Gore about “the rise of the right wing” and “right wing radio” in the context of the health care debate, and later asked the former vice president, “ Is the right wing bigger than its bite?”

The CNN host lead his hour-long interview with Gore with a ringing endorsement of the Democrat’s new book: “We are so honored to welcome back Al Gore to the show, the former vice president of the United States and the Nobel Peace Prize laureate and the best-selling author, all in one person. His new book is ‘Our Choice.’ There you see it. It’s a plan to solve the climate crisis, and it is brilliantly put together.”

Thirteen minutes into the 9 pm Eastern hour, King raised the issue of the Tea Parties with Gore: “What do you make of the rise of the right wing, these rallies and dealing with health care- we’ll move to health care in a minute. Right-wing radio- they take you on pretty good.” As you might expect the “green godfather” (as Katie Couric put it) hinted the anti-ObamaCare activists were being unreasonable: “Well yeah, it’s not entirely new in American politics. We have had a strain like this in our politics for a long time, and there are extreme voices all along the ideological spectrum. And we just have to focus on building the health and strength of our democracy and hope that the voices of reason and deliberation will prevail.”

By Kyle Drennen | November 12, 2009 | 5:07 PM EST
Carrie Prejean, CBS At the top of Thursday’s CBS Early Show, co-host Maggie Rodriguez declared: “...former Miss California, Carrie Prejean, almost walks off Larry King Live, saying his questions were inappropriate.” The headline on screen read: “Prejean Pouts.”
By Colleen Raezler | November 12, 2009 | 2:54 PM EST
Who says Larry King only throws softballs to guests? If you're a conservative, the CNN host has a wicked fastball.

Former Miss California Carrie Prejean appeared on the Nov. 11 "Larry King Live" to promote her new book, "Still Standing." Tension ran deep, with Prejean accusing the host of being "inappropriate" and at one point, taking off her microphone and threatening to walk-off the set.

King also blindsided Prejean, who famously spoke out against same-sex marriage in the Miss USA pageant last April, with a caller who asked her, "I'm a gay man and I love pageants. I'm sure that you, Carrie, have got great gay friends that helped you possibly win. What would you give them as advice if they wanted to get married?"

By Lachlan Markay | November 5, 2009 | 6:06 PM EST
Coverage of Tuesday's election night took place during prime time, giving cable news partisans the responsibility of tracking and reporting details on the elections. Many observers, fed up with the substandard coverage of the networks' opinion commentators, turned to Twitter for up-to-the-minute coverage.

Election followers on Twitter displayed their discontent towards cable news stations throughout the night. Twitterer Some1ToShoutFor lamented, "I know this isn't a huge election, but you would think CNN would be covering it a little bit."

Another, with the ironic username msnbcwatcher, complained of hyper-partisan Ed Schultz's coverage: "What makes @MSNBC think that Ed Schultz should be on TV more? Is there no 1 else to do election coverage? Wheres @DavidShuster?"
By Brent Baker | November 4, 2009 | 4:00 AM EST
During a live midnight EST hour Larry King Live Tuesday night/Wednesday morning, CNN's Larry King repeatedly employed the “far right” pejorative to describe those who backed the unsuccessful New York congressional bid of the Conservative Party's Doug Hoffman. After Wolf Blitzer announced at 12:15 AM EST that CNN had declared Democrat Bill Owens the winner, King blurted: “That may be the first defeat for the far right tonight.”

About 15 minutes later, King pressed Amanda Carpenter of the Washington Times: “Since the far right did get into that race in upstate New York, is this a legitimate defeat for them tonight?”

And a few minutes after that, King forwarded the notion “the far right” is a “threat” to the GOP, asking Ben Stein: “Do you see the far right as evidenced by -- we all know who they are -- as a threat to your party?”