War on Terrorism

What do the networks consider vital information for their viewers? ABC, NBC and CBS again on Thursday offered the latest about the "firestorm" engulfing the National Football League. Yet, these same outlets have ignored a shocking act of domestic terrorism within the United States. Ali Muhammad Brown allegedly murdered 19-year-old Brendan Tevlin on June 25th.  According to CNN, told police: "My…

Starting off a gentle interview with United Nations Ambassador Samantha Power on Thursday's CBS This Morning, co-host Norah O'Donnell began to pitch what could have been a hardball question on the Obama administration's slow response to violence in Syria giving rise to the ISIS terrorist threat, but instead tossed out this: "When you first became ambassador, you pushed for air strikes in Syria.…

On Wednesday, CBS and The New York Times made the point of omitting results from their own poll which show President Obama’s job approval at 40 percent and his approval on foreign policy at only 34 percent from the newscasts and print newspaper, respectively. CBS This Morning and the CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley only mentioned the latest CBS News/New York Times poll in regards to how 57…

President Obama cited American exceptionalism at least ten times in his speech at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa today. Early in his administration, Obama went out of his way to downplay the nature of U.S. exceptionalism, claiming that it was really no different than how any other nation's citizens saw their own country's uniqueness. So his speechwriters knew better than to use that word. But…

Appearing on Wednesday's CBS This Morning, Barak Barfi, spokesman for the family of beheaded journalist Steven Sotloff, ripped the Obama administration over it's handling of the kidnapping of Sotloff and fellow journalist James Foley by ISIS terrorists: "We never really believed that the administration was doing anything to help us. We had very, very limited contact with senior officials..."…

Both Old Media and Old Medea were at it again yesterday. Old Medea is Medea Benjamin, the head of Code Pink, who led the disruption of a Senate hearing on ISIS and was eventually hauled away. Old Media demonstrated its double standards by giving Ms. Benjamin's temper tantrum little attention. That treatment sharply contrasts with that seen in September 2002, when, with a Republican in the White…

Paging the MSNBC PC police! On his All In show this evening, Chris Hayes used some indubitably un-PC language to dismiss concerns that ISIS or other terrorist groups might be infiltrating across our porous southern border. Huffed Hayes: "in the years since September 11, there have been occasional stories of this type. Sort of, a kind of girl talk mash-up of the fear about the border and the fear…

U. of Chicago professor Jerry Coyne thinks that whether you’re talking about ISIS or the Vatican, “there is no ‘true’ religion in the factual sense, for there is no good evidence supporting their claims to truth.” He also says that “you can cherry-pick the Qur’an as easily as you can the Bible, for both are filled with calls for violence and genocide.”

Charles Pierce thinks the campaign against ISIS may cause a spike in the national “derangement” that started on 9/11, and Jonathan Chait sees neoconservatives making the same mistakes now as they did more than a decade ago: “The hysterical threat assessment, the simplistic conflation of mutually antagonistic strains of Islam, and the complete lack of concern for the possibility of overreach.”

Phyllis Bennis is a defender of Iran and its nuclear ambitions, and wants Israel wiped off the map, to be replaced by a single Palestinian state. So naturally she's a Melissa Harris-Perry fave. Appearing yet again today on Harris-Perry's MSNBC show, Bennis put her radical views on display, arguing that many US soliders aren't truly volunteers, but are "forced in by poverty and lack of other…

On Friday, the editorial board of The New York Times warned that allowing the president to escalate military action against ISIS -- the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria – without Congressional approval would set “a dangerous precedent” in a move the board also called “unjustifiable.” Meanwhile, "The cowardice in Congress, never to be underestimated, is outrageous."

CNN’s Wolf Blitzer interviewed President Obama’s National Security Adviser Susan Rice during Thursday’s edition of The Situation Room and neglected to bring up the second anniversary of the tragic attack in Benghazi, Libya that left U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens, foreign service officer Sean Smith and CIA contractors Tyrone Woods and Glenn Doherty dead. Instead, the nearly eight-and-a-half-minute…

On Thursday’s NBC Nightly News, senior White House correspondent Chris Jansing provided not only spin favorable to President Obama a day after his prime time speech on ISIS, but also suggested that this could help the President in the midterm elections. At the conclusion of her report, Jansing told viewers that: "It's a war the President inherited with decisions made now shaping his legacy and…