Appearing on MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell Reports on Wednesday, NBC chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel ripped into President Obama having no strategy to combat ISIS terrorists: "This has been going on for over three years. The buildup of ISIS has not been rapid, it has been quite slow. It has been quite well-documented....I met an ISIS fighter and I broadcast it on Nightly News....So that we have no strategy to deal with ISIS is quite – is quite ridiculous at this stage."

That followed Engel revealing on Sunday's Meet the Press that military officials "are apoplectic" over the President's failure to act on the crisis. "They think that this is a clear and present danger. They think something needs to be done. One official said that this was a Freudian slip, that it shows how the United States does not have a policy to deal with Syria," he added. [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

On Tuesday's CNN Tonight, Don Lemon spotlighted the scoop that President Obama received briefings on ISIS "for at least a year" before the extreme Islamist group's blitzkrieg across northern Iraq – something the Big Three networks failed to do the same evening. During a segment with Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times, Lemon pointed out that the President was "briefed on this a year ago, and then...looked the other way – didn't take it seriously enough."

Kristof did his best to brush this reporting aside: "I don't think it's quite right to say he didn't take it seriously enough. I think that the problem there is that there aren't good options." The CNN anchor also wondered if the liberal politician should take a stronger stance against ISIS, as one of his main counterparts did: [MP3 audio available here; video below the jump]

"Just into the second week of fall classes, a Idaho State University professor has literally shot himself in the foot and provided one answer to the question of 'What could go wrong?' on the growing number of college campuses that allow the concealed carry of firearms," a giddy Brandy Zadrozny opened her September 3 Daily Beast article, "The Concealed Carry on Campus Movement Shoots Itself in the Foot."

"The unnamed professor was teaching a class of roughly 20 students at the Physical Science building yesterday when his handgun—pocketed, but not holstered—accidentally discharged, Lieutenant Paul Manning of the Pocatello Police Department told The Daily Beast," she explained. Of course any concealed-carry instructor worth his salt would tell you that you should never carry a loaded firearm loose in your pocket, that it should always be properly holstered, but why let such a fact get in the way of a "See, I told you so," storyline. 

Unfortunately and completely predictably, the Big Three news networks have ignored Catherine Herridge's Tuesday morning scoop at Fox News that President Obama was briefed on the growing threat of ISIS for over a year, going back to at least several months, if not much longer, before his "jayvee team" taunt in a January New Yorker Magazine interview. Curtis Houck and Jeffrey Meyer at NewsBusters have noted the omissions from the nets' Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning news shows, respectively.

Let's take a closer look at how NBC's Nightly News handled their broadcast. Obama's reported failure to take ISIS seriously and his failure to seize opportunities to strike before their influence became so threatening would have fit perfectly into the show's theme, uttered twice by anchor Brian Williams, namely that the world seems to be "falling apart."

Although Phil Robertson had already dodged a bullet Tuesday morning by giving a clever answer to ABC reporter Ryan Owens, who asked Phil Robertson if “he was a homophobe,” Robertson still wasn’t out of hot water. The famous patriarch of A&E’s “Duck Dynasty” and outspoken Christian conservative is a frequent media target. Predictably, media lefties made it clear who they think the real enemy is. 

As news broke earlier in the day that a second American journalist had been beheaded by ISIL, Hannity asked Robertson what America’s options were for dealing with the terrorists. Robinson replied, “In this case, you either have to convert them,” Robertson paused. “Which I think would be next to impossible.” He explained, “I’m not giving up on them, but I’m just saying, either convert them or kill them. One or the other. Maybe that time has come and gone. So I think with this ideology ... we have to deal with this group way more harshly than we have up to this point.” He went on to make it clear he would “rather preach the Gospel of Jesus to them, but would be “prepared” to kill if they were looking for a fight.

Watch the rest of his comments below:

Leaving no over-the-top comparison unused, ESPN's Bob Ley on Tuesday denounced the Washington Redskins name. Outside the Lines devoted an entire hour to a new poll showing overwhelming support for keeping the nickname. Unhappy with the result, Ley compared the word "Redskin" to slavery, Watergate and opposition to Jackie Robinson's entry into Major League Baseball. [UPDATED: See video below. MP3 audio here.]

After a discussion of how 71 percent of Americans don't want the team altered, the anchor fumed, "But you wonder what the polling back in the day would have been on the Emancipation Proclamation or letting that Robinson guy play with the Dodgers back in '47." After admitting that the controversy is a "media creation," Ley compared, "But so was Watergate when it first started...And 40 years after Richard Nixon left town with his playbook, nobody has a problem with the media's role." 

The lobbying group “Out @NBCUniversal” announced on its social media that they will be the first gay group to march in New York City’s St. Patrick’s Day parade. They linked to NBC New York, which reported “Organizers of the world's largest St. Patrick's Day Parade say they're ending a ban and allowing a gay group to march under its own banner for the first time.”

The parade committee sent a statement to the Associated Press that the “lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender support group at the company that broadcasts the parade,” would be marching up Fifth Avenue “under an identifying banner.”

After President Obama admitted on Thursday that he had "no strategy" for dealing with the ISIS terrorist network, on Wednesday, the network morning shows rushed to portray the aimless commander-in-chief as a tough-talking leader ready to "destroy" the radical killers.

At the top of ABC's Good Morning America, co-host George Stephanopoulos hyped: "President Obama's tough words to the ISIS terrorists who executed American journalist Steven Sotloff." In the report that followed, correspondent Brian Ross proclaimed: "President Obama vowed that ISIS will pay the price for the murder of a second American journalist. The President delivered fighting words this morning..." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

For the second day in a row, the “big three” networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) all ignored a new report from a former Pentagon official which claims that President Obama received briefings on the terrorist group ISIS “for at least a year before the group seized large swaths of territory over the summer.” 

Following the “big three” ignoring the report on their Tuesday night broadcasts, on Wednesday, September 3, all three network morning shows continued to omit the revelation during their coverage of ISIS following the beheading of a second American journalist, Steven Sotloff. While the networks continue to ignore this latest report, all three did their best to make the president look tough in going after the terrorist group. 

Imagine the student association at your university wages a Twitter campaign to get the two candidates for the U.S. Senate seat to agree to a debate on campus. The challenger agrees but the incumbent senator declines.. Disappointing? Yes. But guess who the student newspaper on that campus lavishes praise upon? The candidate who declined to debate.

How does that happen? When the incumbent senator who declined the debate has the magic "D" next to his name as happened in Minnesota when Al Franken declined the invitation of the student government to debate his opponent. The student newspaper, the Minnesota Daily, after registering a barely perceptible bit of disappointment in Franken for declining to debate then went on to heap praise upon his overall record. Oh, and for his opponent who actually did agree to debate? Not a word of praise.