Matthews Rants: GOP Needs to 'Pay A Price' or Democrats Will 'Get Thei

On Friday's Hardball, Chris Matthews continued his tirade targeted at Democrats from the previous day, in the wake of the party's loss in the special election in Florida on Tuesday. The MSNBC host bemoaned how supposedly, "Republicans say, we've got to cut entitlements....And yet, they don't pay a price for it politically. I'm determined that they pay a price for their words." Matthews added…

50 Years Later, We Know That the NYT Distorted the Kitty Genovese Stor

On Friday, March 13, 1964, in Kew Gardens, Queens, Winston Moseley murdered Kitty Genovese, a twenty-eight-year-old bar manager, in Queens. In a March 10, 2014 column (HT Instapundit) in the New Yorker, Nicholas Lemann reviewed two recently published books on the murder and its aftermath, one by Catherine Pelonero and the other by Kevin Cook. Lemann writes that the murder "became an American…

U.S. ‘Transitioning’ Domain Name Functions to ‘Global Community

In a late Friday afternoon release, the U.S. Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) announced its intent "to transition key Internet domain name functions to the global multistakeholder community." The statement is full of the kind of dense bureaucratic language one tends to see when the agency is doing something really important but…

Nice, But Not Enough: WaPo's Kessler Gives 'Four Pinocchios' to Dems

Washington Post "Fact Checker" blogger Glenn Kessler has given "Four Pinocchios" ("a whopper") to a pro-Democratic group's political ad opposing the U.S. Senate candidacy of Louisiana Republican Bill Cassidy. The claim: The Koch Brothers, who are prominent financial supporters of the pro-GOP group Americans for Prosperity, want to protect, in the ad's words, “tax cuts for companies that ship…

Ronan Farrow Condescends: 'Irresponsible' Catholic Church Dogma Is 'Co

MSNBC's Ronan Farrow marked the one-year anniversary of the election of Pope Francis on Thursday by browbeating the Catholic Church for supposedly thwarting the fight against AIDS in the developing world, and for the Church's apparent lack of action in stopping genocide. Farrow played up how "Church social policies often fly in the face of skyrocketing HIV rates," and bemoaned how "the Church…

AP's Boak Hypes Weak Feb. Retail Sales Growth as 'Rebound

February's retail sales as reported may have been expectations of a 0.2 percent seasonally adjusted rise, but the 0.3 percent increase turned in was still far from impressive, especially after considering that the Census Bureau revised January's result down to -0.6 percent from an originally reported -0.4 percent. Naturally, that didn't stop the Associated Press's Josh Boak and his story's…

CNN's Cuomo Revolted By 'Price Is Right' Music at GOP Victory Party; O

[Update, 3:45 pm Eastern: Cuomo angrily responds to NewsBusters; see below.] On Wednesday's New Day, CNN's Chris Cuomo played up how Florida Republican David Jolly's campaign played The Price Is Right theme music at his victory rally on Tuesday, and remarked that its use was somehow a perfect sign of the influence of big money in political races: "What a metaphor for what politics has become…

CNN Plays 'Hide the Story' As GOP Wins Key Fla. House Race

Last night, I noted that the Associated Press had not deigned to consider Republican David Jolly's victory over Democrat Alex Sink in the FL-13 Congressional race a "Top U.S. Story" as of 10:13 p.m. To AP's credit (or perhaps because of yours truly's and others' razzing?), a story about the race was at the Number 6 spot in Top U.S. Stories as of 8:15 this morning. CNN.com, on the other hand (…

Feb. Employment Report's Raw Numbers Were Miserable; As Usual, Press I

On Friday, the government's Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the economy created 175,000 seasonally adjusted jobs in February, with 162,000 of the additions occurring in the private sector. That result exceeded expectations of roughly 150,000, and caused the business press to sing odes of high praise to an economy that was amazingly overcoming this year's difficult winter weather.…

Weakening Obama Economy Not Given Proper Blame in Press Accounts on Re

In the past week, Radio Shack has announced that will close 1,100 stores, or over 20 percent of its U.S. outlets. Staples is shuttering 225 stores, or roughly 12 percent of theirs. Smaller downsizings earlier this year have been reported at Macy's (involving store and other personnel) and J.C. Penney. One gets the impression from press reports that these are occurring primarily because of…

NBC Hypes Spat Between McCain and 'One of the Tea Party's Most Provoca

Friday's NBC Nightly News played up the latest dust-up between Senators John McCain and Ted Cruz over the latter's criticism of three of the Republican Party's presidential candidates, including Bob Dole. Brian Williams underlined the apparent "genuine and palpable tension today in Washington," after Senator Cruz criticized Dole, McCain, and Mitt Romney's campaigns during a speech at CPAC: "…

CNN Laments Medical Marijuana's Illegality: 'Can't A Stroke of the Pen

On Friday's This Hour, CNN's John Berman bemoaned how medical marijuana is still illegal in many jurisdictions, and hinted that executive action needed be taken to fix this situation. After noting that "one of the problems right now is the federal law," Berman asked, "Can't they change this? Can't a stroke of the pen change this problem?" Doctor Sanjay Gupta also played up how people with…

In Mushy New Book, Reporters Lamely Compare Hillary to Rock Star Bono

Anyone who's heard Hillary Clinton sing would know that comparing her to one of the great rock singers is a ludicrous comparison. But it stands out as a notable air-kiss in the new book HRC by White House reporters Jonathan Allen (Bloomberg News) and Amie Parnes (The Hill). When Hillary arrived at the State Department to begin work "as the new boss" in 2009, they wrote, "she brought with her…

CNN Legal Analyst Rips Mall's Hoodie Ban: 'Akin...to Stop and Frisk

Sunny Hostin blasted an Indiana mall's ban of people wearing raised hoodies on Thursday's New Day: "This is...akin, in my view...to 'stop and frisk' – to the pretext of 'stop and frisk' – and I think many courts have found that this type of behavior is unacceptable, and downright unconstitutional." The CNN legal analyst also contended that "'hoodie' is code for 'thug' in many places," and…