Campaigns & Elections

In his Tuesday night State of the Union speech, President Barack Obama made the following pledge: "In the coming weeks, I will issue an Executive Order requiring federal contractors to pay their federally-funded employees a fair wage of at least $10.10 an hour – because if you cook our troops’ meals or wash their dishes, you shouldn’t have to live in poverty." One would have every reason to…

Vice President Joe Biden made the rounds on the network morning shows following President Obama’s State of the Union address and CBS This Morning did its best to help the vice president protect Obama from criticism. Appearing with co-hosts Charlie Rose and Norah O’Donnell on January 29, Biden was treated to a friendly interview, and the only tough questions he received were that the Obama…

Though this is a local story, I believe it deserves wider attention. That's because it likely reflects an attitude frequently found in local media around the nation. A January 21 story at the Cincinnati Enquirer worried that fiscally conservative candidates who have begun winning local school board elections "may be philosophically opposed to the way public schools have been traditionally…

Leave it to the Lean Forward network to entrust fair reporting on pro-life legislation in Congress to a woman who won the 2013 New York Abortion Access Fund's Champion for Choice Award. In her January 28 story, "House passes abortion insurance restriction," MSNBC.com's Irin Carmon quoted from just one Republican who voted for the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act and yet found three male…

I guess when you've run out of anything meaningful to say, you revert to your tired old one-liners, even when they are — or should be — embarrassing. In early 2009, five days after President Obama's first State of the Union speech, Alex Castellanos, who at the time was apparenty a "Republican strategist," said the following on a CNN Sunday show: "I think, as a friend told me once, that --…

Did Al Sharpton just stumble into some unfortunate phrasing, or did he take an intentionally vulgar shot at Rand Paul?   On his MSNBC show tonight, discussing the fact that Paul recently raised the most salacious scandal of Bill Clinton's presidency, Sharpton said "Rand Paul is really going to try to do the Monica Lewinsky on the Democrats as a way of countering the war on women that they're…

The conventional wisdom in Washington was succinctly expressed in a recent Washington Post article, "The GOP's Uphill Path to 270 in 2016." The Electoral College, claims Dan Balz, now gives the Democrats a decided advantage that will be hard for the GOP to overcome. He correctly noted that many formerly Republican-leaning states have shifted to the Democratic column. On one level, Balz is…

Ever since MSNBC launched its sister website MSNBC.com, writer Zachary Roth has been obsessed with new voting laws, and has consistently demonized GOP-sponsored legislation as a form of voter suppression. Roth’s latest piece, published on January 28th, continued MSNBC’s scare tactics surrounding popular voter ID laws. The title of Roth’s article fretted that the “GOP wants to change Missouri…

He has a lifetime American Conservative Union (ACU) score of 12.5 (his lowest marks were in 2011 with a score of 5), a 100 percent rating by the NARAL Pro-Choice America, a zero rating from the National Right to Life, and a solid 85 percent in 2012 (the last year the ADA scored) from the liberal Americans for Democratic Action. With numbers like that, Virginia's senior senator Mark Warner (D)…

NPR reporter Cokie Roberts had some harsh words for President Obama when she appeared as a guest on This Week w/ George Stephanopoulos on Sunday, January 26th. With President Obama scheduled to give his sixth State of the Union speech on Tuesday January 28, the ABC panel had some tough advice for the embattled president. Roberts, who in the past has made incendiary comments about…

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul appeared on Sunday's Meet the Press and pointed out the hypocrisy of Democrats accusing Republicans of a "war on women" despite their support of former President Bill Clinton, who "took advantage of a girl that was 20 years old and an intern in his office." Despite Paul making on the comments on NBC, only CBS This Morning on Monday reported the remarks. [Listen to the…

Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) appeared on CBS Face the Nation on Sunday morning and was met with a barrage of questions from host Bob Schieffer about his involvement in the government shutdown. Apart from being the victim of Schieffer’s accusations that the Tea Party senator was to blame for the shutdown, it also appears that Mr. Cruz was the victim of editing by CBS. Based on video from Senator…

President Obama is scheduled to give his sixth State of the Union address on January 28, and CBS’s Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer decided to bring on the man who will give the Tea Party response, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX). Rather than focus primarily on the failures of the Obama Administration over the past 5 years, the veteran CBS reporter chose to use his interview with Cruz as an…

For the past several months, ABC’s Jonathan Karl has been engaged in an ongoing battle with White House Press Secretary Jay Carney. The Chief White House Correspondent for ABC News has been one of the few reporters from the “big three” networks who has been consistent in questioning the Obama White House. Filling in for George Stephanopoulos as moderator of This Week on January 26, Karl…