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With 14 million Americans out of work, New York Times economics reporter Catherine Rampell is wondering where the left-wing mobs are in the front-page story for Sunday Business, “Somehow, the Unemployed Became Invisible.” The text box imagined a better time: “In the 1930s, Americans did not endure unemployment so quietly.” (Back on June 18, Rampell agonized over how “one little word” was…

President Barack Obama and congressional leaders seeking to negotiate a deal to increase the legal limit on the federal government's debt, would need to agree to increase that debt by $615.865 billion between now and Sept. 30, just to keep the government going at current spending levels, according to the CBO's latest estimate of the fiscal 2011 deficit and the Treasury Department's latest…

At a White House press conference today, President Barack Obama said that "professional politicians" understand the debt crisis better than "the public." 

During the roundtable discussion on Sunday's NBC Meet the Press, liberal Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson claimed the fight over the debt ceiling would be a political "winner" for President Obama, prompting host David Gregory to declare that the commander in chief would look like "the debt slayer." Gregory then turned to chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd and wondered why…

New York Times Executive Editor and "collapsed Catholic" Bill Keller reviewed “Absolute Monarchs – A History of the Papacy” by John Julius Norwich --the cover review for the Times Sunday Book Review. The issue included an editorial note at the front of the magazine confessing the paper’s rough relationship with the Catholic Church (which Times Watch has documented).   Through the years, The…

A proposed "culturally insensitive" traffic law in New South Wales, Australia, could land Muslim women of good conscience in jail for a year, the Associated Press alerted readers in a July 10 story. Essentially the law requires motorists pulled over by police officers to show their faces so that officers can confirm their identity against a driver's license photo. Failure to do so could…

In an interview with Tim Pawlenty on Sunday's NBC Meet the Press, host David Gregory cited New York Times columnist David Brooks slamming Republican opposition to tax increases in debt ceiling negotiations as "fanaticism" and proclaimed: "There is this purity test which is no tax increases, no revenue increases at all." Pawlenty responded by pointing out Brooks's liberal leanings: "Well,…

Julie Moos at Poynter.org reported Monday that reviews are “mixed” for the forthcoming Juan Williams book on his firing from National Public Radio (title: Muzzled: The Assault on Honest Debate, due July 26). But the only review Moos cited was Kirkus Reviews, which hammered at the Williams book as a step backward in the debate: “In the end, about the last thing the civil-discourse cause needs,…

Want a little wisdom? Given we're a culture that tends to be self-help hungry, odds are that you and I aren't hostile to a little good advice. Who would be? Well, May and June were months populated by commencement addresses. Some were memorable; some were political; some were self-indulgent. Some need to be reread now that the parties are over, internships are being settled into, vacations…

President Obama’s budget blueprint may have been unanimously rejected by Congress in late May, but suddenly the president is the courageous, ambitious one on budget talks after issuing new rhetoric indicating a willingness to make cuts in social programs like Medicare.   In his Sunday front-page story, “House Speaker Is Pulling Back On Deficit Deal – $4 Trillion Plan Stalls Over Tax…

After nearly four months of a costly military intervention in Libya to oust leader Muammar Gaddafi, little progress has been made in assuring the quick exit President Barack Obama promised in March. With no end to the conflict in sight, either, Obama's NATO coalition looks like it could fall apart before Gaddafi's regime does. Let us know what you think of the US involvement in Libya in the…

It's a laudable thing to mourn the loss of First Lady Betty Ford, but on Monday's Washington Post op-ed page, Post columnist E.J. Dionne is so kind he argued against reality. He praised Betty Ford for telling an interviewer that it would be no big deal if her 18-year-old were having an affair and neither was youthful exploration of marijuana. Dionne claimed: "That can drive political…

Frank Schaeffer has gaudily departed from the evangelical Christian family he was raised in, and how writes hair-on-fire articles about the dangers of the radical religious right. Last week, we found him warning on MSNBC of how Michele Bachmann represents a “theocracy in waiting” from people “who actually hate the United States as it is.” Unsurprisingly, The Washington Post thinks Schaeffer’…

The Associated Press finally acknowledged the existence of Tuesday's competitive CA-36 special congressional election on Sunday afternoon. The winner will replace Democrat Jane Harman, who left Congress in February to head up the Woodrow Wilson Center. But as anyone who has followed the wire service's biases would expect, Political Writer Michael R. Blood's nearly 1000-word write-up ("GOP…