By Tom Blumer | April 21, 2014 | 6:28 PM EDT

Earlier today, just an hour before a hearing was to begin at the National Labor Relations Board, the United Auto Workers union dropped an appeal of the election it lost in February as it attempted to become the bargaining representative for workers at Volkswagen's Chattanooga, Tennessee plant.

In a writeup which appears at the Associated Press's "Big Story" but which somehow failed to appear in a 6 p.m. search on "UAW" at the Big Story site (sorted by date), reporter Erik Schelzig pretended that two Democratic Congressmen who last week started an "inquiry" into the circumstances surrounding the union's loss will be conducting a "congressional investigation." No they won't, because they can't, because their party is in the minority. What they can do is conduct a theatrical exercise which looks like a "hearing" which has no power and which a responsible AP reporter wouldn't call a "congressional investigation." Excerpts follow the jump (bolds are mine):

By Matt Hadro | January 14, 2014 | 11:56 AM EST

On Monday's NBC Nightly News, anchor Brian Williams ignored bad ObamaCare enrollment numbers for young people, but made time to announce the retirement of a long-standing liberal congressman, a development that neither ABC's World News nor the CBS Evening News deemed worth mentioning.

"Big loss for the Democrats in Congress," stated Williams, who said outgoing Rep. George Miller was "often called the Ted Kennedy of the House." NBC ignored the latest ObamaCare enrollment numbers which the CBS Evening News picked up on, highlighting the low enrollment among young people which is detrimental to the law's success.

By Geoffrey Dickens | April 22, 2011 | 10:49 AM EDT

As part of Green is Universal week, NBC's Kelly O'Donnell highlighted a fight between Republicans and Democrats over the use of Styrofoam in the House cafeterias. On Thursday's Today show, O'Donnell reported, "Many Democrats are boiling mad because Republicans, now in charge of building operations, put a fork in the bio-degradable utensils Democrats had picked."

O'Donnell went on to relay the concerns of Democratic Congressman George Miller as she noted that he had alarmingly tweeted to Republicans, "Stop serving carcinogens to constituents," and then aired a soundbite of Miller (while he was brandishing a Styrofoam cup) hyperbolically exclaiming: "This cup is a very expensive cup. It's very expensive to the environment, it's very expensive to our energy policy and it's very expensive, in some cases, to the health of individuals. "

By Matt Hadro | November 10, 2010 | 5:56 PM EST

Using his best attempt at a football analogy, Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) tried to explain Wednesday that Speaker Pelosi is the best choice for the Democrat House leadership even though she is unpopular with the American voters -- or in football, the home fans.

"What the Republicans and others in these campaigns are asking us to do is to say 'Well, because the Jets fans are booing Eli Manning, take him off the field'," the congressman explained.