Judiciary

Celebrating Wednesday's Supreme Court rulings in favor of gay marriage, on Thursday's NBC Today, correspondent Gabe Gutierrez reported live from San Francisco city hall and announced: "In one of the country's oldest and largest gay neighborhoods, vindication. It was the day San Francisco's Castro District had been waiting for." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump] A series…

Reporting from the White House lawn during NBC's live coverage of the Supreme Court's rulings in favor of gay marriage on Wednesday, correspondent Peter Alexander touted how the decisions were "very personally satisfying for the President, who it was only about a year ago during the course of the campaign...came out and said that he has had this personal evolution on the topic..." [Listen to…

While most reactions from the liberal media today regarding the Supreme Court's rulings on the gay marriage cases, liberal constitutional law professor and Daily Beast contributor Adam Winkler laments that the right rulings may have been made for the "wrong reasons." Winkler made clear that he would have preferred the Court to have taken a far more activist tack and essentially recognize a…

During live coverage of the Supreme Court's gay marriage rulings on Wednesday, NBC legal analyst Lisa Bloom could barely contain her enthusiasm at the decisions overturning the Defense of Marriage Act and Proposition 8: "There is no question that this is a sweeping historic decision for gay rights....I think this is only the beginning, by the way. This is the decision today, but this is going…

The folks at MSNBC were ecstatic this morning following the Supreme Court’s invalidation of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), but that joy exploded to Chris Matthews levels of tingledom during the 11:00 a.m. hour when President Obama decided to call the couple who took the Prop 8 case to court while they were being interviewed by network anchor and outspoken same-sex marriage advocate…

Writing for the liberal Atlantic magazine today, CBS News legal analyst Andrew Cohen jumped off the proverbial deep end by comparing today's Supreme Court ruling invalidating section 4 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965 to two infamous Supreme Court decisions from the 19th century. "[T]he Supreme Court's decision in Shelby County is one of the worst in the history of the institution. As a…

Guest-anchoring the June 25 edition of Now with Alex Wagner, MSNBC's Joy-Ann Reid took the opportunity to react to a 2-hour-old Supreme Court ruling with an appropriate amount of sky-is-falling bluster. Reid's overwhelmingly liberal panel was distraught at the decision and agreed that this would lead to a “slow but steady erosion of voting rights in the South.” When asked his opinion about…

Appearing on MSNBC moments after the Supreme Court handed down its decision on the Voting Rights Act, NBC News chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd wrung his hands over the prospect of Congress having to make adjustments to the 1965 law: "I don't think Congress is mature enough to do this right now, to be perfectly blunt. That the political, ideological, sort of the way some of these…

MSNBC’s penchant for stoking racial animosity in service to a liberal agenda reached a new low on June 25 following the Supreme Court’s invalidation of the Voting Rights Act. Following the decision that Section 4 of the Act was unconstitutional, MSNBC’s Chris Jansing claimed that the ruling was an outright “setback for civil rights.” That's doubtless a claim that many liberal advocates will…

During live coverage, minutes after the Supreme Court struck down a key portion of the 1965 Voting Rights Act on Tuesday, a hyperbolic Terry Moran on ABC inaccurately spun the whole law as being invalidated. It was left to former Democratic operative turned journalist George Stephanopoulos to correct his colleague. Moran insisted, "Right now there is no voting rights act operative in the…

Imagine that in  a week in which George W. Bush was dogged by not one or two but three scandals -- one of which was the IRS singling out liberal groups for stricter scrutiny -- a federal appeals court invalidated a recess appointment the Republican president made, finding he improperly ran an end run around the U.S. Senate. The national media would, no doubt, pick up on the story as evidence…

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd offensively roped Clarence Thomas into her column on the arrest on sexual battery charges of Jeffrey Krusinski, the Air Force officer in charge of sexual assault prevention programs for the branch: "There was a fox-in-the-henhouse echo of Clarence Thomas, who Anita Hill said sexually harassed her when he was the nation’s top enforcer of laws against…

On your bike! New York Times's roaming critic Neil Genzlinger reviewed Constitution USA with Peter Sagal, airing Tuesday night on PBS. Judging by the headline, "The Philosophical Rumble Of That Living Document," Genzlinger's editor didn't know what to do with his puzzling, cranky review of the documentary (starring Sagal, liberal host of the NPR game show Wait Wait ... Don’t Tell Me!).

Should federal prosecutors be allowed to pack heat?  It’s a good question given the recent assassinations of a District Attorney and his assistant in Kaufman County, Texas.  While not federal prosecutors, the recent assassinations illustrate that prosecutors have become a target for violence, particularly in federal cases where drug cartels – or terrorists – may be involved. Recently, Sen.…