Appearing at the end of MSNBC's The Daily Rundown on Tuesday, NBC News NASA correspondent Jay Barbree wished host Chuck Todd good luck in becoming moderator of Meet the Press, hailing the chief White House correspondent: "...when God was making Chuck Todd, he was disturbed for a moment, he got distracted, and he looked back and he'd made his heart twice his size." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

Barbree continued: "And that's what Chuck's going to bring back to the show. He's going to bring back heart, good taste, fairness. It's always had that, that's why it's on the top. And the people who put you there, Chuck, who decided you are to be the moderator, should be patted on the back over and over again."

On the heels of a Department of Justice (DOJ) lawyer admitting to Judicial Watch that Lois Lerner’s missing e-mails do exist comes another stunning revelation.

On Monday evening the New York Observer reported “the IRS destroyed Lerner’s Blackberry after it knew her computer had crashed and after a Congressional inquiry was well underway.” Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) network coverage of this fishy behavior on the part of the IRS and Lerner? 0 seconds.  

Race-baiter turned MSNBC host Al Sharpton garnered an egregiously fawning profile in Monday's New York Times, which has long hailed the "civil rights leader" while glossing over or ignoring his racially inflammatory past (Tawana Brawley, "white interlopers").

The worst criticism reporters Nikita Stewart and Jason Horowitz can muster in "A Slimmed-Down Sharpton Savors an Expanded Profile": Sharpton was once "divisive" and "overweight" in his gold medallion and track-suit days. But now he has the White House's ear and an even wider field for activism: "The slimmer Mr. Sharpton gets, the more space he takes up....for him, these are very good days."

As the 2014 midterm elections approached, the media were quick to criticize conservative donors like the Koch brothers for backing issues important to them. But journalists largely ignored the incredible financial power being used to promote the liberal agenda.

Five top donors – Michael Bloomberg, Warren Buffett, Pierre Omidyar, Tom Steyer and George Soros’s own son, Jonathan – are major funders of the left. Together, they have contributed at least $2.7 billion since 2000 to groups pushing abortion, gun control, climate change alarmism and liberal candidates.

For the second day in a row, CBS did its best to hype opposition to fast food chain Burger King after it announced plans to purchase Canadian coffee and doughnut chain Tim Hortons and relocate to Canada to lower its tax burden. 

On Tuesday, CBS This Morning fill-in anchor Anthony Mason introduced a segment by boosting how “Main street and some in Washington are fuming about the fast food giant's move to Canada.” [See video below.]

Someone must have slipped the wrong data to the Associated Press's Josh Boak yesterday before he composed his dispatch on the Census Bureau's latest report on new home sales.

Boak got the current month's news right, though likely by accident (like almost everyone else in the business press, he relies on seasonally adjusted figures, and rarely goes to the unadjusted data), telling readers that "Fewer Americans bought new homes in July, evidence that the housing sector is struggling to gain traction more than five years into the economic recovery." That's fine, but his characterization of the longer-term history of home sales was woefully incorrect:

As of Saturday, Fares Akram, the New York Times correspondent in Gaza usually relegated to second billing or "contributed additional reporting" on stories, is being credited with lead bylines. The timing for Akram's higher profile is inauspicious, given a recent Forbes investigation by Richard Behar on the media's slanted coverage of Israel, especially the Times, which he called "the most important media outlet in the world...widely regarded the most authoritative media outlet in the world for international coverage."

Behar dug up a photo on Akram's Facebook page of Palestinian Liberation Organization terrorist leader Yassir Arafat that Akram previously used as his profile photo. Arafat was responsible for the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics and has been lionized by the Times  for his "heroic history" as a "father figure of Palestinian nationalism."

Tonight's CBS Evening News spent 63 seconds on the Burger King fast-food chain's plan to merge with Canadian donut chain Tim Hortons, a move which would also relocate the new company to Ontario, Canada,  for "substantial tax savings" where the corporate tax rate is much more favorable for business (15 percent) than the present federal corporate rate (35 percent). 

But while business correspondent Anthony Mason noted that "Burger King could face a backlash if the deal goes through," he failed to present the viewing audience with the rebuttal that conservatives would offer to liberal Democrats -- the rash of "inversion" plans American corporations are executing is proof positive of the need for comprehensive tax reform that lowers the corporate income tax rate -- the better to be globally competitive -- and simplifies the U.S. tax code. Attached below is the transcript of the segment:

Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton appeared on the Fox News Channel (FNC) Monday afternoon and informed viewers that a Department of Justice (DOJ) attorney admitted to his organization on Friday that the e-mails belonging to former IRS official Lois Lerner that were thought to be lost likely still exist. He declared to FNC’s Shannon Bream that the story of Lerner’s hard drive being damaged and destroyed and thus her e-mails were permanently lost has “all been a pack of malarkey” and “a big lie.”

When it came to the major broadcast networks covering this huge story on their Monday evening newscasts, there was no coverage to be found as ABC, CBS, and NBC all carried out the latest censoring of news surrounding the IRS. [MP3 audio here; Video below]