On Tuesday's The Lead, CNN's Jake Tapper zeroed in on University of Missouri Professor Melissa Click's attack on a student journalist, after he tried to cover anti-racism protests on campus. Tapper bluntly stated, "I have to say that I found this video shocking — not just this mob of students trying to intimidate this student journalist — but they had faculty help!" The anchor later asked Professor Tom Warhover, who also teaches at Mizzou, "Do you think she should be stripped of her courtesy opportunities?" Warhover replied, "I think that's probably a reasonable response."

I noted on Sunday how former Associated Press reporter Philip Elliott, writing for Time Magazine's Time.com website, joined the Scott Walker pile-on brigade criticizing the Wisconsin Governor's reasonable — arguably to a fault — position that he doesn't personally know whether Barack Obama is a Christian.

A separate post by Elliott, which covered a weekend retreat hosted by Charles Koch, originally carried a headline so obviously outrageous that it should never have gotten past him (though, to be fair, he may not have been responsible for creating it) or Time's editors (if they exist) for more than a few minutes after it appeared. Readers will see that headline after the jump (HT Mary Katharine Ham at Hot Air):

Of all the media memes ever attempted, the one blaming Republicans for the fact that now-resigned Office of Personnel Management Director Katherine Aruchleta was confirmed is high on the list of the most ridiculous ever. A reasonably close runnerup is the idea that Congress failed "to adequately fund OPM."

Matt Balan at NewsBusters covered CNN's ridiculous tweeted claim that "Republicans acknowledge ... they didn't properly vet Archuleta's qualifications." It's as if only Republicans — who, I must remind the media herd, were in the minority in the Senate in late 2013 when she was confirmed, and who opposed her by a 35-8 margin — were the only ones responsible for vetting this woman. Why isn't the press asking Harry Reid why his Senate Democratic Party majority didn't do its job? Far more fundamentally, did the president's responsibility for selecting competent people vanish when Barack Obama was elected?

CNN's Chris Cuomo pressed Pam Geller on Thursday's New Day over her leadership of "a group that does take shots at Islam on a regular basis." Cuomo underlined that "you can show the cartoon. People have the equal right to criticize your showing the cartoon as an overt provocation of a religion." He also wondered,  "Why go slight for slight with the Muslims?" The anchor later asserted, "It just seems like you're throwing a stone at something that doesn't really help anything."

Not the endorsement someone heading into the Republican primaries would normally want, but it's the one Rand Paul got.  On today's This Week [hosted by Jonathan Karl in the absence of Stephanopoulos], far-left Rep. Keith Ellison declared that on a variety of issues he is "proud to stand" with Rand Paul.

Roll the video and watch Bill Kristol look on beningly as Ellison praises Paul.  Let's read Bill's mind: every Ellison accolade was another chunk of GOP primary voters lost for Kristol's least-favorite Republican candidate. In the unkindest cut, Kristol claimed that it was Paul standing with Ellison, not the other way around,since Ellison and his fellow lefties were first to stake out those positions and Paul has now decided to become a "liberal Democrat" on them. Ouch!