Conservatives & Republicans

Sarah Wheaton touted the new "gender-neutral" bathroom at the White House as "the latest in a series of symbolic steps the Obama administration has taken to work the priorities of the LGBT community into its broader themes of inclusiveness and tolerance" in a Thursday item on Politico.com. Wheaton played up how "the newly designated restroom is an example of how the administration has been…

Newly-declared 2016 presidential candidate Rand Paul took a shot at the media during a Wednesday campaign appearance in Milford, New Hampshire. An unidentified reporter asked the Kentucky senator about a recent interview he did with the Associated Press that centered on the controversial issue of abortion. Paul replied, "Why don't we ask the DNC: Is it OK to kill a 7-pound baby in the uterus?"

As the Big Three networks were touting President Obama's claim that climate change affects the health of children – including that of his own daughter – on Wednesday, their morning and evening newscasts have yet to report on the politician's criticism of many Christians during a Tuesday prayer breakfast. Mr. Obama underlined that "on Easter, I do reflect on the fact that as a Christian, I am…

When it comes to false media narratives, the typical right-winger should be more concerned with the plank in his own eye than with the speck in the eye of a liberal. That, minus the allusion to the Sermon on the Mount, was the essential argument from Heather Digby Parton in a Wednesday column. Parton sees Rolling Stone’s debunked, retracted University of Virginia rape story as one component of…

After all three networks declined to label Senator Rand Paul a conservative during their morning news shows, on Tuesday night ABC’s World News Tonight broke ranks and labeled him a “mainstream conservative” on issues such as abortion, gay marriage, and tax cuts. Fellow networks CBS and NBC continued to not use the conservative label and stuck to labels such as “Republican” and “libertarian.”

New Republic staff writer Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig has clearly run out of defenses for the conduct of those involved in the disgraceful, scandalous journalistic malpractice which gave rise to the now-retracted and thoroughly discredited "A Rape on Campus: The Struggle for Justice at UVA" at Rolling Stone. So here's her last refuge: Conservatism deserves some of the blame, because Sabrina Rubin…

In a Tuesday post, The Nation blogger Dave Zirin argued that it’s politically unseemly for Gov. Scott Walker to root publicly for certain Wisconsin sports teams, including the University of Wisconsin basketballers, who came up just short in last night’s men’s national title game against Duke. Zirin claimed that it’s “almost flagrantly irresponsible” for the media to publicize Walker’s support of…

After NBC’s Today touted the latest hire for Hillary Clinton’s expected presidential campaign, Monday’s NBC Nightly News also gushed over the move while blasting Republican Jeb Bush for creating an “embarrassing situation” by identifying as a Hispanic on a voter registration form. Peter Alexander reported Clinton has hired “a former aide to First Lady Michelle Obama” in Kristina Schake, who, he…

Conor P. Williams really enjoys watching the amazing race -- not the CBS program, but the race for the Republican presidential nomination, which Williams called “my favorite TV show” in a Monday column on Talking Points Memo. For Williams, much of the “entertainment value” of the GOP contest lies in its right-wing extremism: “This is a show where the American conservative id fully unravels in…

Christianity’s tent is not big enough to accommodate both the supporters of Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act and Brittney Cooper, who in a Wednesday piece for Salon blasted both the state’s pre-fix RFRA and the religious right in general. “This kind of legislation is rooted in a politics that gives white people the authority to police and terrorize people of color, queer people and…

The favorable coverage of the agreed framework for future talks over Iran’s nuclear program continued on Friday morning as the network newscasts hailed the “legacy defining moment now within reach” for President Obama and compared Iranian “hardliners” to deal skeptics in the U.S. and Israel. Today co-host Savannah Guthrie began the program’s coverage by hailing the “landmark deal” with NBC's…

On Thursday night, ABC and NBC cheered the “historic” agreement of an outline for continued talks with Iran and declared that “the United States could be entering a new era in its relationship” with the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism. NBC's Andrea Mitchell reflected on the “18 months of tough negotiations” that “end[ed] with an all-nighter” with the possibility that “the United States…

If it's Thursday, it must be...yet another front-page New York Times story on the issue that is going to tear the Republican Party apart and doom prospects in 2016 (the actual issue changes every week, of course). On cue with the ginned-up controversy over Indiana's Religious Freedom Restoration Act, came reporter Jennifer Steinhauer's story, under a liberally stacked deck of headlines: "Rights…

CNN's Gary Tuchman condescended towards Christian florists in rural Georgia on Wednesday's Anderson Cooper 360 over their religious-based stance against participating in homosexual "commitment ceremonies," as the state hasn't legalized same-sex "marriage" yet. Tuchman used the Bible as a club against two female employees: "The Bible talks an awful lot about love and loving your fellow man....You'…