Congress

As of 6 pm Eastern on Thursday, CNN has devoted just 19 seconds of air time to the release of five prisoners from Guantanamo Bay detention facilities – a news brief during the New Day program. This is still more coverage than CBS and NBC, as both Big Three networks ignored the story on their Thursday morning newscasts. ABC gave a 16-second news brief on Good Morning America.

In an interview with newly elected Colorado Senator Cory Gardner for PBS's Charlie Rose, Bloomberg View columnist Al Hunt grilled the Republican on conservatives in Congress being obstructionist: "Some of your Republican colleagues, Ted Cruz in the Senate, those twenty-four House members who voted against Speaker Boehner, they're not interested in getting things done as much as they are in…

On Wednesday, ABC’s Good Morning America had a segment that promoted how, due to budget cuts, the IRS will be forced to “delay those refund checks,” “increase the risk of identity theft,” conduct “46,000 fewer audits,” and maintain an “IRS help line” that “is going to become much less helpful.” Co-host George Stephanopoulos lamented about “fewer audits means less revenue to the Treasury” to run…

Carol Costello badgered Rep. Sean Duffy on Wednesday's CNN Newsroom over House Republicans' attempt to defund President Obama's executive action granting amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants: "The Department of Homeland Security protects the United States from terrorist attacks. Some Senate Republicans – among them, Lindsey Graham – say the strategy should be revised in light of what…

Victor Paul Alvarez's LinkedIn profile says that he's an "Associate Editor - Boston.com at The Boston Globe," with previous stints at East Bay Newspapers and the Baltimore Sun. He was a copy boy at the Sun in 1994 while he was also a student at Towson University, which would likely make him a bit over 40 years old now. It is beyond comprehension that someone with Alvarez's decades of experience…

The New York Times' message to the new Republican congress? Don't cross Obama. That was the gist of three political stories on Wednesday. Sheryl Gay Stolberg's profile of grizzled Senate veteran John McCain included this harsh attack: "...despite hints that he is trying to reinvent himself from cantankerous Obama critic to elder statesman, Mr. McCain still seems to be in clobber mode."

The latest report out of Venezuela by the Associated Press's Hannah Dreier has a time stamp of 1:15 p.m. today. This means that the wire service has had plenty of time to report, and has chosen not to report, a powerful pastoral letter issued yesterday by that country's Catholic bishops (original in Spanish; full Google Translation) denouncing that country's descent into a system they described…

Well, they're nothing if not consistent. When the Obama administration lost a court ruling against its ban on Gulf of Mexico drilling after the BP oil spill, it simply issued another ban. When it lost at the Supreme Court in the Hobby Lobby case, it just issued a new rule which hardly differed from the one the Court nullified. Now, when it becomes clear that the administration won't get the…

The ability of tiny numbers of far-left fringe group demonstrators to get undue press attention virtually any time they want continues to be intensely annoying. In mid-2007, Barack Obama made closing the prison at Guantanmo Bay a core promise of his 2008 campaign. That was 7-1/2 years ago. Obama has been in office six years. Gitmo is still open. So naturally, the aggrieved professional…

Friday's NBC Nightly News enthusiastically promoted President Obama's proposal to provide "free" community college education, to the tune of $60 billion over ten years. Brian Williams hyped the "ambitious offer that could help so many families." Chris Jansing asserted that the President's plan is a "a goal everyone can agree on," but also underlined that the multi-billion dollar program is going…

In a news brief on Thursday, NBC Nightly News reported that one of Californi’s two Democratic Senators, Barbara Boxer, would not seek reelection in 2016 and instead retire following “a decade in the House” and her first election to the Senate in 1992. When it came to labeling where she stood politically, however, NBC shied away from labeling her a liberal or progressive.  Instead, anchor Brian…

The Esquire pundit urged Democrats to “screw with [the Republicans] every way you can… Monkeywrench the whole business and explain in simple terms to the country why you're doing it. This has to start in the White House. The rest of the country needs to be protected from the hazardous material for which a third of it voted.”

"Obama agenda, meet the wrecking ball," the Daily Beast's Patricia Murphy groused as she opened her January 7 piece, "The Republican War on Kale." Murphy took issue with Senate Republicans setting their sights on a wildly unpopular element of the Obama agenda: the federal overhaul of school-lunch programs all over the country.

Appearing on Wednesday's NBC Today to promote his new film Birdman, actor Michael Keaton oddly started the interview by taking a jab at the new Republican Senate Majority Leader: "...let me just read something. This is just too good. Mitch McConnell – this is from our boy, Mitch...Here's what he says, 'We all know that one of the things the Senate is best at doing is not doing much,' he said. '…