Conservatives & Republicans

One day after he pitched a softball to President Obama by asking him if criminal justice reform was “your defining moment” as the country’s first African-American President, NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt returned with part two on Tuesday’s newscast by touting Obama’s “pointed jabs” and “candid assessment” of the 2016 Republican field.

As is so often the case with such stories, one can tell how favorable or disappointing a government report on the economy was by whether a story about it is still present at the Associated Press's "Top Business News" page several hours after its release. Today's news from the Census Bureau on September's factory orders and shipments, released at 10 a.m., was extremely disappointing. Thus, it is…

In a friendly exchange with Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Matthews Burwell on Tuesday, MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell tried to tee up the Obama administration cabinet official to slam Republican presidential frontrunner Ben Carson on abortion: “...a pediatric neurologist who does not get involved with care for women's reproductive systems....says that life begins with conception, no…

New York Times congressional reporter Carl Hulse delivered a balanced column Tuesday recounting why reformist, Tea Party-minded conservatives have aligned against more traditional Chamber of Commerce Republicans. But it was marred by Hulse's contemptuous tone ("the anti-chamber crowd") and labeling habits, with Hulse making not one, not two, but six references to "hard-right" conservatives in a 1…

On Tuesday, all three network morning shows happily touted President Obama attacking Republicans at a Democratic fundraiser Monday night over GOP presidential candidates objecting to CNBC’s biased debate. At the top of NBC’s Today, co-host Savannah Guthrie proclaimed: “The Republican candidates, briefly unified, splinter again over their debate demands as President Obama takes a swipe, mocking…

Who said it? "Get rid of all this corporatism, this corporate welfare . . . I would love to have the government stop this corporate welfare--that's what I want . . . This is a huge racket that's wrecking the country."  Did you guess Bernie Sanders? Probably not because you read the headline. Yet no one could be blamed for thinking it was Sanders. But indeed, it was Charles Koch, who said it in…

Truth, the cinematic attempt to make heroes out of the agenda-driven journalists who produced and broadcast the fraudulent 2004 CBS News story about George W. Bush's Texas Air National Guard service, went into wide distribution this past weekend, with utterly disastrous box-office results. Readers, in between moments savoring the film's apparent descent into oblivion — though it will almost…

Appearing on the Monday edition of MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show, New York magzine writer-at-large Frank Rich denounced the letter written by numerous Republican presidential campaigns to media organizations concerning the format of future debates as “fascistic” and written by “scared little children” but “seem[s] to have been drafted by Stalin.”

Those who hope that Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and Mark Levin get to moderate a Republican presidential debate include Hannity himself, Ted Cruz, and Walsh. As they (almost) used to put it on Sesame Street, one of these persons is not like the others. Walsh, who recently joined The Nation after more than a decade and a half at Salon, argued in a Friday article that such a debate would benefit…

In a stunning display of arrogance on Monday, the cast of ABC’s The View not only refused to apologize for calling Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina “demented” following the latest GOP debate, but co-host Whoopi Goldberg actually further attacked Fiorina for criticizing the talk show over the vicious smear.

CNN's Alisyn Camerota spotlighted Senator Lindsey Graham on Monday's New Day over his supposedly good performance at the earlier CNBC debate for the lower-tier Republican presidential candidates: "You being on that early debate has allowed you to bust out some great zingers and jokes. I mean, a lot of people thought that you stole the show...it gave you more air time that you wouldn't actually…

On Monday’s NBC Today, MSNBC political analyst Nicolle Wallace explained the Republican Party’s long-term distrust of the press: “At the core is a massive generational distrust with the mainstream media and it bubbled over in the debate last week.”

In the week when a new James Bond film is coming out, it’s fitting that two lefty writers are both shaken and stirred by recent Republican blasts at media bias. In a Sunday article for Salon, Boston College history professor Heather Cox Richardson charged that “since the 1950s, Movement Conservatives have fought the fair examination of their ideas. They embrace a worldview in which a few wealthy…

A Friday evening story at the New York Times covered the Obama administration's decision to "try to block the release of a handful of emails between President Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton." In it, reporters Michael D. Shear and Michael S. Schmidt demonstrated that President Obama undoubtedly did not tell the truth in his interview with CBS News's Steve Kroft in a 60…