Congress

Throughout coverage of President Obama's address to Congress Thursday night, anchors and correspondents on both CBS and NBC gave fawning reviews of the new jobs plan, in some cases, even before the speech began. In contrast, ABC took a much more skeptical tone, with a focus on the President's falling poll numbers.   Evening News anchor Scott Pelley opened CBS's coverage by proclaiming the…

On Thursday, the day after the Republican presidential debate, the network morning shows turned to a high profile Democrat for a response. On Friday, the day after Barack Obama's jobs speech to Congress, the same programs turned to Democratic Vice President Joe Biden.     On Friday's Good Morning America, George Stephanopoulos offered this softball to Biden: "Mark Zandi, the economist says…

Apparently the media civility police have become so sensitive to any slight of President Obama that MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell actually invented one such controversy out of thin air during her 1 p.m. ET hour show on Thursday. [Audio available here] Speaking to Obama advisor Melody Barnes, Mitchell declared: "John Boehner today just slammed the President and said, you know, that the American…

Talking to MSNBC host Joe Scarborough on Thursday's NBC Today, co-host Ann Curry fretted over a handful of congressional Republicans declining to attend President Obama's upcoming jobs speech to a joint session of Congress: "At least three Republicans are not going to be in the audience....is this disrespectful to the office of the president, Joe?" Scarborough responded: "I don't know if it'…

When President Obama announced he wanted to deliver his latest speech on the economy to a joint session of Congress on the same night as a GOP presidential debate, House speaker John Boehner politely requested the administration wait one day. Obama acceded, to the chagrin of the left and the New York Times. Reporter Jennifer Steinhauer devoted a full story to the squabble in Friday’s edition,…

Yesterday, at organized labor's traditional Labor Day picnic at Cincinnati's Coney Island amusement park, Vice President Joe Biden gave the keynote address. His key lines, as reported by Carl Weiser at the Cincinnati Enquirer's Politics Extra blog (video is here at MRC-TV): "... this is a different kind of fight. This is a fight for the heart and soul of the labor movement. This is a fight for…

While the United States Postal Service has been facing financial concerns for some time, it has never been as close to the brink of bankruptcy as it is today, with a $5.5 billion payment due in September and a lack of resources to make the payment. Unless Congress intervenes, USPS could have to shut down operations this winter. As the postmaster general, Patrick R. Donahoe, remarked, "If…

That civility thing which Democrats and the Left thought to be all-important earlier this year is sooooo January. Unless it changes its stripes overnight, the incivility and hostility on display today in Detroit, which hasn't been seen much in establishment press reports to this point, won't appear on the Big 3 Networks' morning shows tomorrow. The American people really need to see what has…

On Wednesday (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), quoting Indiana Congressman Andre Carson's inexcusable, hateful comment at a Congressional Black Caucus event on August 22 (key sentence: "Some of them in Congress right now of this Tea Party would love to see you and me ... hanging on a tree"), I observed that "Carson was obviously accusing some of his congressional colleagues, whom he gutlessly…

According to the Associated Press's Steve Peoples in a Saturday evening report, presidential candidate Rick Perry, speaking at a private reception in New Hampshire (which begs the question of whether Peoples was even there), told those attending: "I don't support a fence on the border." Then, again according to Peoples, "The answer produced an angry shout from at least one audience member." "…

If we gave out a prize for the media personality who was the biggest drama queen over the non-scandal regarding the disagreement about when President Obama should address a joint session of Congress, I'd nominate Mediaite's Tommy Christopher, who yesterday insisted that "Speaker John Boehner Should Resign For His Unprecedented Insult to the President":

CBS's Bill Plante hyped the supposedly "testy confrontation" between President Obama and Speaker Boehner on Thursday's Early Show over scheduling a presidential address to Congress: "This may prove that there is no argument too petty in today's Washington." By contrast, on Wednesday's CBS Evening News, Norah O'Donnell placed more blame on Obama for giving Boehner only a "15-minute heads-up…

"Speaker Says No, So Obama Delays Speech" is how The New York Times's September 1 front page headline spun the short squabble over the timing of President Obama's upcoming speech before Congress on his job creation plan. "Spat Over Which Day to Address Economy," added a subheadline. The online version opted for a headline that went lighter on the loaded language: "Obama Moves Jobs Speech…

Rep. Allen West (Fla.), the only Republican member of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), is considering leaving the CBC after a fellow member of the caucus practically compared Tea Party members to lynch mob members. Rep. Andre Carson (D-Ind.) recently told a gathering in Miami that Tea Party members "would love to see us as second-class citizens" and to see blacks "hanging on a tree."…