Congress

On Friday, MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell observed that the Republican-led Benghazi investigation gained credibility in the wake of the Hillary Clinton email scandal that it uncovered: "Well, the Benghazi investigation by the Select Committee was viewed by many as overkill. That it had all been cleared up back two years ago. And the fact is that some people, certainly the partisans for Hillary…

The Monday editions of ABC’s World News Tonight and NBC Nightly News aired news briefs on the announcement that Maryland Democratic Senator Barbara Mikulski will retire. They both failed to label Mikulski a liberal and heaped only effusive praise on her. On ABC, anchor David Muir hailed the announcement as “the end of an era in Washington” for the 78-year old “longest serving woman in Congress” …

CNN State of the Union substitute host Dana Bash certainly lived up to her last name when it came to grilling Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) over the Department of Homeland Security funding and asking if the “conservative wing” of the Republican Party was too centered on principle and “chaos” instead of the “reality” of governance. Bash started the interview off by insinuating that everyone is…

Introducing a one-sided report on Monday's NBC Today that featured no criticism of President Obama, co-host Savannah Guthrie proclaimed: "Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has arrived ahead of a controversial speech to Congress tomorrow. And that visit at the invitation of Republicans is threatening to further strain the Obama administration's relations with Israel."

On Friday evening, the Big Three networks continued their blackouts on the Thursday revelation that the Treasury Department's deputy inspector general, Timothy Camus, is conducting an "active investigation" into the "potential criminal activity" at the IRS over Lois Lerner's supposedly missing e-mails. Instead, ABC's World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, and NBC Nightly News all devoted full…

The Fiscal Times is a generally strong and informative online publication. That said, it has occasionally exhibits symptoms of what could be seen as either serious leftist bias, quite disappointing ignorance, or both. One such example arrived in my email box early this morning. It contained the following headline and opening tease for a story about the food stamp program:

At the Associated Press late Thursday morning, Ken Dilanian, the wire service's intelligence writer, did a marvelous job of covering up the essence of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper's Worldwide Threat Assessment testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee. The trouble is that if he were doing his job as our Founders anticipated he would when they gave the nation's press…

The Associated Press's headline at Alan Fram's coverage of the controversy over the existence of an Obama administration contingency plan if it loses the Halbig v. Burwell case pending at the Supreme Court may be among the most inchoherent ever: "GOP CLAIMS PAPER SHOWS FED AIDES' PREPS FOR HEALTH LAW LOSS." "Paper"? What is in question is an alleged 100-page contingency plan should the Court…

Terrorists target America's shopping malls, but the nation is defenseless thanks to partisan Republicans shutting down the Department of Homeland Security. That's the ominous picture the three major networks painted this week. Instead of offering balanced coverage of a fight that tied DHS funding and Republican opposition to Barack Obama's executive order amnesty, ABC, NBC and CBS hyped the…

On Thursday, both NBC's Today and CBS This Morning were eager to promote MSNBC's town hall infomercial that allowed President Obama to push his executive overreach on illegal immigration and slam his opponents. On Today, news anchor Natalie Morales proclaimed: "The President is urging millions of undocumented immigrants to keep planning for eventual relief....he pledged to do everything in his…

Wednesday night, Fox News's Greta Van Susteren sharply criticized Susan Rice for her Tuesday comment about Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's impending March 3 speech to Congress, namely that "On both sides, there has now been injected a degree of partisanship, which is not only unfortunate, but I think it's destructive of the fabric of the relationship." To be clear, Rice is not freelancing.…

Tuesday's New York Times featured a front-page "congressional memo" by Carl Hulse and Ashley Parker devoted to the paper's new favorite topic: How the GOP-led Congress is staining the party's reputation for 2016: "Funding Fight Poses Dangers For the G.O.P. -- Battle on Immigration Puts Security at Issue."

While all three of the major broadcast networks on Tuesday night covered President Barack Obama's veto of the bill passed by Congress approving construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline, ABC, CBS and NBC failed to mention Obama's veto came despite a majority of Americans supporting the pipeline. Total coverage amounted to one minute and six seconds.

Continuing to hype a possible "shutdown" of the Homeland Security Department if Congress did not approve funding by Friday, Tuesday's network morning shows all seized on White House talking points that any delay in funding would threaten national security and placed blame for the budget impasse squarely on Republicans.