Congress

According to the Israeli publication Haaretz and many other news outlets, President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry won't meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu because it's "inappropriate." Specifically, "The White House cited the proximity of the Israeli election to Netanyahu's visit, and the desire to refrain from interfering in the election." Certain blatant falsehoods…

Fareed Zakaria surprisingly pressed President Obama – a man he endorsed in 2008 – on his CNN program on Sunday. Zakaria raised how critics point out that "the White House takes pains to avoid using the term 'Islamic terrorists,'" and that "others say that you downplay the importance of terrorism." The President actually had to answer substantive questions on foreign policy – something he didn't…

The Seattle Seahawks yesterday - in a moment of profound foolishness - forsook Beast Mode for Least Mode.  And it cost them the Super Bowl.   But they can take ever so slight solace - the Media has been in Least Mode for decades.  This has been on prominent display throughout the Barack Obama Administration - and certainly when it comes to the Administration’s many, MANY unilateral power grabs…

Even Charles Babington at the Associated Press, for once not the completely beholden Administration's Press, seemed to be having a hard time buying what Democrats at a meeting in Philadelphia were selling. Unfortunately, he decided to let Joe Biden's direct contradiction of his party's congressional delegation's sunnyside-up stance on the economy go unreported. In a video carried at the Weekly…

Even as his fellow Morning Joe co-hosts praised John McCain on Friday for denouncing Code Pink anti-war protesters who attempted to disrupt a Senate hearing as "low-life sum," MSNBC's Thomas Roberts lectured the Republican Senator for shutting down the intruders: "If people want to show up and protest, right? They should be allowed to hear their voices. And instead of calling Capitol Hill police…

The nation’s major broadcast networks continued their blackout on Friday morning of not covering the U.S. Senate’s passage of the Keystone XL oil pipeline with zero mentions on their morning newscasts. Following the Senate’s passage of the bill on Thursday by a bipartisan margin of 62-to-36, the networks passed on even devoting a news brief to the topic during their Thursday evening news…

The same networks that have repeatedly defended Eric Holder in the past are now quietly ignoring the congressional testimony of a Milwaukee sheriff who has slammed the Attorney General. 

The U.S. Senate took the step Thursday of approving the Keystone XL oil pipeline in a bipartisan fashion by a margin of 62-to-36, with nine Democrats joining 53 Republicans to pass it for the first time after failing to do so under the previous Congress.  When the major English and Spanish language networks aired their Thursday evening newscasts, however, the news of the bill’s passage was…

On her Thursday MSNBC show, host Andrea Mitchell was aghast at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreeing to speak before a joint session of Congress during an upcoming U.S. visit without consulting the Obama administration: "The White House is furious, furious at Israel's Prime Minister Netanyahu and also a little bit angry at Speaker Boehner for inviting Netanyahu to speak before Congress, to a…

On Wednesday, the CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley was the lone network evening newscast to cover the confirmation hearings of Attorney General nominee Loretta Lynch before the Senate Judiciary Committee and while that was the case, it was not without bias. Even though CBS News congressional correspondent Nancy Cordes featured numerous soundbites from Senate Republicans questioning Lynch, she…

Filling in for John Heilemann on the Monday edition of Bloomberg’s With All Due Respect, Campbell Brown took a shot at House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for “whining about President Obama” in an interview that aired Sunday on CBS’s 60 Minutes. Following a clip from the interview, Brown first credited Boehner for “holding a very diverse, you know, House…

After all three network evening newscasts ignored President Obama dropping his controversial plan to tax 529 college savings accounts on Tuesday, only Wednesday's CBS This Morning noticed the development, giving it a mere seventeen seconds. Neither NBC's Today nor ABC's Good Morning America covered the White House reversal.

New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait writes, “If a candidate for a managerial job at your office insists that two plus three equals seven, it wouldn't matter how well-qualified this candidate may be at any other aspect of the job,” and that similarly, “even if you agreed with everything else the Republicans stood for” other than climate-change denial, “how could a party so obviously unhinged be…

On Thursday's All In With Chris Hayes, MSNBC's Irin Carmon bewailed the apparent inevitability that the Republican-led Congress would reintroduce a proposed ban on abortions after the twentieth week of pregnancy: "I think even if this bill were to come back and it would have a broader rape exception, it would still be an attack on all of the women who need abortions after twenty weeks."