Conservatives & Republicans

Reporting on an upcoming foreign policy speech by former Florida governor and 2016 contender Jeb Bush on Wednesday's NBC Today, correspondent Peter Alexander was quick to hype a liability for the Republican: "It's one of the biggest challenges facing Jeb Bush, how he addresses the violence and volatility in Iraq, the country his brother, former President George W. Bush, invaded more than a decade…

Responding to a question on Facebook Tuesday about left-wing pundit Howard Dean attacking Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker as "unknowledgeable" for not graduating college, Mike Rowe, host of CNN's Somebody's Gotta Do It, dismantled Dean's assertion and wondered if America had "confused qualifications with competency."

The American Prospect’s Paul Waldman argues that “anti-intellectualism has often been an effective way for Republicans to stir up class resentment while distracting from economic issues. It says to voters…[d]on't aim your disgruntlement at Wall Street, or corporations that don't pay taxes, or the people who want to keep wages low and make unions a memory. Point it in a different direction, at…

In a rundown of the deteriorating situation in Libya in its February 23 issue, New Yorker Magazine's Jon Lee Anderson quoted "a senior (Obama) Administration official" (the capital "A" is Anderson's) who, incredibly, claimed that the country's descent into virtual chaos resulted from "the politicization" of the September 11, 2012 terrorist attack which killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and…

Just shy of 24 hours after a federal judge halted President Barack Obama’s executive amnesty, the major broadcast networks displayed their palpable opposition to the ruling during their Tuesday night broadcasts, lamenting that it “dashes American dreams for millions of families under the threat of deportation” after Wednesday was set “to be a historic day for millions of illegal immigrants” when…

It took well over 24 hours, but the New York Times finally corrected (HT Instapundit) op-ed columnist Gail Collins's ignorant Saturday contention about how Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker caused teacher layoff in 2010: "As well as the fact that those layoffs happened because Walker cut state aid to education." Collins was so sure of herself that she emphasized how Walker's 2010 state aid-caused…

In London, England earlier this week, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker delivered a speech about global trade at the Chatham House think tank. Given that the group's mission is "to help build a sustainably secure, prosperous and just world," and that it encourages "open debate and confidential discussion on the most significant developments in international affairs," it seemed a reasonable…

Nicole Hemmer argues that right-wingers trash the so-called objective media with an eye toward “making room for their own explicitly ideological” outlets “like Fox News, Breitbart, and talk radio…In an era when ideologues increasingly choose their own facts, the partisan policing of accuracy threatens to do in factuality altogether.” And where is the Media Research Center in this article?

Libya's descent into chaos troubles the New York Times editorial board. Naturally, the Old Gray Lady's Sunday editorial, even as it referenced the 2011 "civil war," didn't even try to make any association between the current mess and the administration which initiated it. The editorial's recitation of the current situation, without any mention of President Obama, NATO, or the United States…

What an ironic title New York Times op-ed columnist and former editorial page editor Gail Collins used — "Scott Walker Needs an Eraser" — in her February 13 opinion piece blasting Wisconsin's Republican governor. In her nitpicky, selective mind, Walker must already have an eraser, one that's so powerful that it could reach back to the year before he became Badger State chief executive and…

In her Talking Points Memo column, Marcotte writes that King v. Burwell itself is ridiculous but par for the course: “Exploiting the obsessions and fantasies of rightwing cranks…has [been] the standard operating procedure of conservative leadership for decades now. But that the Supreme Court is elevating this kind of talk radio madness to the highest court in the land takes this to another level…

Democrat John Kitzhaber announced his resignation as Governor of Oregon shortly after 3 p.m. Eastern Time on Friday (noon Pacific Time). By 3 a.m. Eastern time Saturday morning, as seen here, less than 12 hours after the announcement, the Associated Press's "Big Story" page, the collection of current stories the wire service considers especially important, had no stories on Kitzhaber. But there…

Late Friday afternoon, roughly two hours ("shortly after noon" Pacific Time) after the press release announcing Oregon Democratic Governor John Kitzhaber's resignation effective next Wednesday, Philip Bump at the Washington Post's "The Fix" blog tried to explain away the national press's nearly complete failure to cover Kitzhaber's mounting ethical and now potentially criminal problems for nearly…

Sonia Saraiya suggests that Stewart “is one of the most influential political figures of our era” and claims that “as difficult as it has been to advance a progressive agenda over the last 16 years, it would likely have been impossible without Stewart’s ability to connect to millions of viewers and remind them that they weren’t alone in hoping for something better.”