Wouldn't it be fascinating if media members that helped this President pass ObamaCare against America's wishes came to the conclusion this was his biggest mistake?
On Sunday's "The Chris Matthews Show," the Huffington Post's Howard Fineman and the Washington Post's David Ignatius both told a somewhat startled host that Obama spending so much of his time and political capital on passing healthcare reform was his worst decision to date (video follows with transcript and commentary):
The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) apparently thinks itself qualified to judge how religious a college is. So far in 2011, the NLRB declared two Catholic colleges not Catholic enough to be exempt from federal labor law.
This controversial labor union attack on Manhattan College and Xavier University has gone virtually unnoticed by the national news media. The Washington Times was the only major newspaper to mention this assault on religious freedom. According to Nexis searches, none of the broadcast networks reported the story, nor have the other major newspapers. The Washington Times piece was an op-ed from Patrick J. Reilly, the President of the Cardinal Newman Society, criticizing the "assault" on Catholic colleges.
The Washington Times took up the issue today of how PBS and NPR stations exploit their own airwaves to lobby against Republican budget-cut proposals. Reporter Seth McLaughlin and Stephen Dinan reported that spokesmen for PBS superstations WGBH in Boston and WETA in Washington “said their appeals never told their audiences which way to lobby Congress, but only to call and let their feelings be known.”
A look at WETA’s ad (which we recorded after the February 22 Frontline) shows this is simply and obviously untrue. The announcer clearly insists the House Republicans are putting kiddie programs at risk and cuts “will have a devastating effect on WETA and the television programs you and your family rely on.” Do they really expect people to agree this isn’t an advocacy ad? Do they think someone would say "I'm so glad they've inspired me to call and say "I hate WordGirl and Sid the Science Kid. Please defund those little jerks.'" Here’s the whole script:
(video, audio and transcript after the jump)
Conservative radio host Monica Crowley on Friday smacked down Newsweek's Eleanor Clift over racism in the Tea Party.
In the second segment of "The McLaughlin Group," the host addressed July's controversial resolution by the NAACP condemning so-called racist elements within the Tea Party.
Liberals Clift and Clarence Page of the Chicago Tribune predictably supported the NAACP while bashing the conservative organization.
Crowley with the support of Pat Buchanan defended the Tea Party while calling the NAACP irrelevant.
With McLaughlin surprisingly taking Crowley and Buchanan's side, sparks flew in an oftentimes heated discussion (video follows with partial transcript and commentary):
Elena Kagan's record clearly demonstrates she's a liberal, but to Rachel Maddow, she's just not liberal enough to be an "actual liberal." While she did a bit of a victory lap with Newsweek's Dahlia Lithwick on Tuesday night that the Republicans failed to scare people about Kagan and "nobody was terrified," Maddow still felt Obama wimped out by not picking an obvious radical leftist:
LITHWICK: At the end of the day you have a nominee who just utterly slid under the radar. And I don't know how the fundraising went but I know that the narrative was "She's fine, yawn. She's fine."
MADDOW: Yes. Well, should liberals look back at this experience? I mean, we're not out of it yet but should they essentially look back and say, "An actual liberal, a real -- a more liberal justice could have gotten through here?"
LITHWICK: I think so. It seems to me that to the extent that Obama had a moment to put someone a little bit more -- a little closer to a Stevens legacy or a Brennan legacy, a little closer to a passionate firebrand, this would have been the moment to put them up if the rumors are -- and they're only rumors -- true that Ginsburg is going to leave while Obama is still in office.
On Friday's Situation Room, CNN's Jack Cafferty tossed cold water on the Obama administration's "recovery summer" claims, stating that the "current recovery has been one of the worst for job creation ever." Cafferty also criticized the dangerous growth in the national debt, underlining that there "appears to be a rather serious disconnect," as the President requested billions in additional spending.An unbylined Associated Press item carried at NPR quotes President Obama as follows about Arizona's recently enacted immigration law-enforcement measure:
The president is repeating a blatant falsehood about the Arizona law that has gained instant currency in the establishment press and leftist circles. It has no basis in fact, or in the legislation Grand Canyon State Governor Jan Brewer recently signed.
You don't have to go any further than the 20th line of the law (downloadable at this Constitution Law Prof Blog post) to see that Obama and his fellow critics are wrong:
A short Associated Press item tonight notes that the Organization for American States is not happy with the state of Arizona for passing an immigration law-enforcement measure:
I don't expect AP to expand on OAS's statement any time soon, because in the process of doing so they might feel compelled to look at how some of the countries criticizing Arizona handle their own illegal immigrants.
“Despite persistent violence and a critical election coming up, President Obama hardly ever mentions the war in Iraq,” Joseph Curl reports in today’s Washington Times, and the news media are largely aiding in this neglect. Curl discloses that “the last time a White House reporter asked about the Iraq war was June 26,” while ABC, CBS and NBC aired just 80 minutes of coverage in all of 2009.
In a story primarily about President Obama's plan to campaign on behalf of incumbent Democratic senators in Nevada and Colorado, Washington Times reporter Joseph Curl did not name Colorado Senator Michael Bennet's opponent.
That oversight would ordinarily be defensible if the Bennet's primary competitor were polling weakly. But he is most decidedly not, at least where it ultimately counts -- in general election match-ups against the current Republican primary front-runner.
Former Colorado House Speaker Andrew Romanoff, who claims to have the support of "a majority of the Democrats in the state legislature," is that competitor.
Here are the paragraphs from Curl's report germane to the Colorado situation (bold is mine):
Even though his cable TV news network may not have that many viewers in relative terms to his competitors, MSNBC's David Shuster apparently has some clout when it comes to getting things done in Washington, D.C. - at least on a municipal level.
Shuster, making effort to give his viewers some "perspective" of his personal experience with the reason record-breaking snowfall in Washington, D.C., showed pictures of scenes near his Washington, D.C. home - complete with unplowed snow and a downed tree on MSNBC Feb. 12.
"And to give you some perspective on what it's been like for all of us here in Washington, D.C., on residential streets that don't get plowed," Shuster said. "First up, this is a picture my wife took on Sunday in front of our house looking north of 32nd Street," Shuster explained. "This was after the first storm that dumped about 23 inches and before the second drop of another 12. And here's a photo from the same angle last night, the weight of the second storm caused one of the trees to fall down yesterday morning breaking windows in that apartment building on the right. We have street parking and here's what 35 inches of unplowed snow does to cars."
Video Embedded Below Fold
Former "Crossfire" host Bill Press apparently cannot distinguish between news and opinion. He is furious that his application for press credentials with the congressional press corps was denied due to content on his website urging readers to tell Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., to vote for health care legislation in the Senate. He cites numerous examples of CPC members that host opinion content, but neglects to differentiate between their commentary and their news coverage.