Shortly after Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus called on MSNBC's president to personally apologize and "take corrective action" for an offensive statement posted to the liberal network's Twitter feed which claimed that conservative people hate interracial families, the TV executive appears to have done just that.

"The tweet last night was outrageous and unacceptable. We immediately acknowledged it was offensive and wrong, apologized and deleted it," MSNBC president Phil Griffin said in a press release that was read aloud on "The Cycle."

I agree with MSNBC. I find it hard to believe that Gov. Chris Christie knew nothing about his staff's plotting a massive traffic jam on the ramp to the George Washington Bridge for political retribution.

On the other hand, I also find it hard to believe that Obama didn't know his own IRS was auditing his political enemies. And I find it hard to believe that Obama didn't know you wouldn't be able to keep your doctor under Obamacare. But most of all, I find it hard to believe that MSNBC host Al Sharpton didn't know Tawana Brawley was lying when she claimed to have been gang-raped by rogue cops on the Wappingers Falls, N.Y., police force.

The Los Angeles Times reports that the Comcast-owned Weather Channel is starting to play hardball over demanding higher fees to air on the DirecTV satellite TV system.

Everyone needs their weather news to stay safe, they argue, so DirecTV is threatening public safety by not knuckling under. They're even pressing DirecTV viewers to write Congress and insure Comcast gets more profits for this "critical public safety resource," like your local TV station doesn't cover the weather:

Conservative Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby has offered some New Year’s resolutions for the news business. He began by noting legendary columnist H. L. Mencken in his day at the Baltimore Sun said he was hard-pressed to to name five papers that conducted themselves as fairly and honestly “as the average nail factory.”

“If Mencken were alive today, would his opinion of the news business be less pungent? My guess is it would be even more so,” Jacoby guessed. “The journalistic sins and scams he was blasting a century ago are still being committed, only now the perps are more likely to have Ivy League degrees and to regard their occupation as a lofty profession.” But he offered some suggestions for self-improvement:

A recurring theme during the Obama presidency has been that, despite the distinct sense he gives of a man who sees himself as “above it all,” the president is a regular down-to-earth Joe. His efforts to connect with the hoi polloi have not always succeeded. His most recent attempt, enrolling in Obamacare, was sullied by the revelation that he didn’t actually dirty his own hands navigating the exchanges — his “staff” enrolled for him — and the gesture was purely symbolic anyway.

Former Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen observed at the Washington Post that the cynicism of the move would be matched if the Obamas announced that they were “symbolically” sending their daughters to D.C.’s failing public schools as a show of solidarity, while keeping the girls enrolled at the tony Sidwell Friends.