Appointments

Apparently, "I will think before I tweet" should be on Irin Carmon's New Year's resolution list. Her failure to do so shortly before the ball dropped in Times Square signaling the beginning of 2014 has caused her considerable embarrassment. On Tuesday, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor issued an injunction which "temporarily prevented(the government) from enforcing contraceptive coverage…

On Monday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid showed up for a phone interview on The Diane Rehm Show on NPR to discuss shredding the filibuster for presidential appointees. A very polite Rehm asked if this might make partisanship worse. “I'm sorry to smile, as you can't see on radio, but more dysfunction? I mean, gee whiz,” Reid replied. But underneath the Nevada-nice routine came an attack…

ABC's Good Morning America and NBC's Today on Friday did their best to downplay Senate Democrats' Thursday move to curtail the Republican Party's filibuster power. The two newscasts devoted a combined 39 seconds to the controversial vote, which ABC's Dan Harris labeled a "bold move". GMA apparently thought the potential marriage of serial killer Charles Manson was more important, as it devoted…

Never one to let facts get in the way of the proabort narrative, Mark Sherman at the Associated Press characterized today's 5-4 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to allow Texas's abortion law to stand while on appeal as one rendered by "the court's conservative majority." Really? Anthony Kennedy is one of the justices in the critical "Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), which reaffirmed in…

On her 1 p.m. ET MSNBC show on Thursday, host Andrea Mitchell whined about Senate Republicans blocking some of the President's recent nominees and worried about the impact of Obama's sagging poll numbers: "...in terms of presidential power, polls affect votes....this is diminishing the President's clout, when he can't frighten – you know, have enough political weight to frighten everybody into…

British historian Niall Ferguson brought a breath of fresh air to the set of MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Thursday, effortlessly cutting through the show’s typical left-wing spin. Co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski were engaged in their new favorite pastime – slamming Ted Cruz and other GOP “extremists” – when Ferguson jumped in and suggested that President Obama may also be culpable in…

Ideologically-driven conservatives on the Supreme Court seem determined to nix a campaign contribution limit in the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, thus dealing a blow to the fight against corruption of American politics. That's the implication of The Hill's Sam Baker in his report, "Justices clash over campaign finance law," published shortly after the Court heard oral arguments this…

Anthony Mason played up President Obama's $89 restaurant tip on Monday's CBS This Morning, underlining that "when it comes to tips, President Obama is tops." However, the network has yet to cover a Monday story from the New York Times that pointed out the "uncomfortable reality for the White House: the administration has named no more women to high-level executive branch posts than the Clinton…

Sarah Palin, call your office. PolitiFact, you've been refuted again. In the later sections of a Wall Street Journal column on Sunday (in Monday's print edition), former Vermont Governor and unsuccessful 2004 Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean wrote in opposition (HT Twitchy) to Obamacare's Independent Payment Advisory Board, calling it "essentially a health-care rationing body."…

Back in May I noted that the Big Three broadcast networks failed to report on the Third Court Court of Appeals issued a ruling invalidating an Obama recess appointment that was made when the Senate was technically in session. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals made a similar ruling in late January. Well, yesterday, a third federal court, this time the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, rebuked…

Whatever they're paying Teresa Ghilarducci, who is "the Bernard L. and Irene Schwartz chair of economic policy analysis at the New School for Social Research," it's too much. The bolded sentences seen after the jump which Ms. Ghilarducci included in a Friday New York Times op-ed (HT "Mungowitz" at the "Kids Prefer Cheese" blog via Megan McArdle) makes my contention an open and shut case (…

While NBC and CBS covered Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell having a "war of words" over GOP opposition to some of President Obama's nominees, neither network detailed the hypocrisy of Reid considering the so-called "nuclear option" to eliminate the filibustering of such nominees. On Thursday, Time's Michael Scherer cited numerous quotes from Reid…

The Barack Obama Administration has been on a five-plus-year-long Collect-As-Much-Information-On-Us-As-Possible spree. With Tens of Millions of Phone Records Grabbed – It’s the Government, Stupid ‘Thousands of NSA Analysts Can Listen to Domestic Phone Calls,’ Read Emails, Texts, IMs Latest Big Government Data Grab: Justice Sues to Get It Without a Warrant IRS Tea Party Scandal Shows…

On Wednesday's NBC Nightly News, chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd cheered President Obama picking Susan Rice to be his new national security advisor and nominating Samantha Power as U.N. ambassador: "They are now among the most powerful women in the American foreign policy community. Behind-the-scenes power players now front and center." Amid sound bites of Obama praising both…