Crime

Former New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin was convicted on 20 of 21 counts of corruption and bribery today. USA Today reporter Rick Jervis did a bit of a profile of Nagin in the course of reporting on the convictions. It included a recounting of his time at the city's helm during Hurricane Katrina in 2005. But one thing his 2:39 p.m. report predictably did not include was Nagin's Democratic Party…

It may be that we can finally identify the type of criminal conviction which might cause the New England conference of the National Associations for the Advancement of Colored People to call for the removal of a state legislator. Based on a conversation Boston Herald columnist and radio talk host Michael Graham had with the group's president, it appears that some form of felony conviction…

On Wednesday, Mayor John Tkazyik explained in the Poughkeepsie [N.Y.] Journal that he and almost 50 other mayors have dropped out of former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg’s group Mayors Against Illegal Guns (MAIG). The reason they left? They all felt Bloomberg was using the organization to trample on the Second Amendment rather than to push for the stricter enforcement of existing…

Though there were some exceptions (e.g., this one caught by Geoffrey Dickens at NewsBusters a few days ago), most press reports as the beginning of the trial of former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin tagged him as a Democrat. Apparently, there's a quota on "D" references at the Associated Press. A lengthy AP story by Kevin McGaill carried at Time.com and AP's national site has no reference to…

On Thursday's The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell on MSNBC, substitute host Ari Melber tried to hype former Nevada Lieutenant Governor Sue Wagner, who left office almost 20 years ago, as a "conservative" who recently left the Republican Party because of the Tea Party. But, as she appeared as a guest, Wagner quickly identified herself as having been "somewhat liberal my entire life," and…

Thursday's New Day on CNN spotlighted President Obama's latest push for gun control, and lamented how "gun issues got just a mention in this year's State of the Union," compared to last year's post-Sandy Hook address. Anchor Kate Bolduan underlined how supposedly "gun control is expected to dog him [Obama] while he's on the road." Correspondent Brianna Keilar later asserted that "in 2013, it…

I understand the arguments for the legalization of marijuana: It can generate tax revenue. It can reduce illegal supply and demand. It can strip power from cartels and lessen crime across and at our borders. And it isn't so dangerous as other illegal drugs or alcohol. President Barack Obama even claimed one of those arguments when he recently told New Yorker Editor David Remnick, "As has been…

CNN's Piers Morgan provided his latest overly simplistic, pro-gun control solution to mass shootings in a series of posts on Twitter on Monday. The British TV host's first policy prescription: "Given the young ages of most mass/random shooters in America, I'd make it illegal for anyone under 25 to buy a gun of any kind." Morgan continued by comparing buying a gun to renting a car: "It's…

On the Thursday, January 23, PoliticsNation on MSNBC, host Al Sharpton characterized voter ID laws as a "poll tax" as he celebrated the 50th anniversary of the abolition of poll taxes with the 24th Amendment's passage. Even while acknowledging that the IDs are generally issued by states for free, Sharpton cited Attorney General Eric Holder and Georgia Democratic Rep. John Lewis in complaining…

When Edgar Tamayo killed a police officer in Houston, he could have been defined by our national media as "an American living in the shadows." But in Thursday's New York Times, the headline was "Texas Executes Mexican Man for Murder." Reporter Manny Fernandez began by noting outrage at Rick Perry's Texas from "the State Department, Mexican officials, and Latino advocates," but it wasn't…

Piers Morgan sparred with Ann Coulter on his Wednesday CNN show over Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein's vow to target the NRA in an upcoming movie and over the lack of new gun control regulations in the wake of the Sandy Hook shooting in December 2012. Morgan did his best to defend Weinstein, after Coulter blasted him for his "utter hypocrisy" in only recently condemning the impact of…

Carol Costello hinted at her liberal slant on the gun issue on Wednesday's CNN Newsroom as she discussed the recent movie theater shooting in Florida. Costello lamented the "bizarre conversation now taking place in America: instead of talking about whether loaded guns ought to be allowed in movie theaters, many people are talking about 'text rage.'" An on-screen graphic during the segment…

A frontrunner for the award going to the most obvious media double standard of the week certainly has to be NBC reporter and Meet the Press host David Gregory. Asking a question virtually no one in the press has asked about President Barack Obama in matters far weightier than Chris Christie's "Bridgegate," Gregory addressed the following tweet to New York Times White House Correspondent Peter…

As he ended his PoliticsNation show on Wednesday, January 8, MSNBC's Al Sharpton praised Attorney General Eric Holder and Education Secretary Arne Duncan for issuing guidelines pushing for schools to reduce "harsh punishment" of students, which the MSNBC host labeled a "national problem," and griped about black students disproportionately receiving discipline.