Rachel Maddow

Norah O'Donnell and Rachel Maddow can't seem to make up their minds. In the same segment, Maddow argues - and O'Donnell fails to question - that Judge Sonia Sotomayor was not picked as an affirmative-action nominee, and follows with the mystifying non-sequitur that opposing "the first Hispanic Supreme Court Justice" would be politically damaging for the Republican party.O’Donnell was interviewing…

Language always gives us away, George Carlin once observed. And it's blowing the cover from liberals unhinged by former vice president Dick Cheney getting the better of an off-balance President Obama.Two recent examples -- the first, Rachel Maddow's MSNBC cable show on May 20 with Newsweek investigative reporter Michael Isikoff as one of her guests. Isikoff described an "off the record" meeting…

Monday's Chicago Tribune featured the article "Powell 'still a Republican': Rebutting critics, he criticizes party's far right voices."  The article starts:Former Secretary of State Colin Powell warned Sunday that ideological conservatives, particularly radio commentator Rush Limbaugh, have gained a hold over the Republican Party that risks driving the GOP into an extended exile from power.Powell…

Just when you thought left-wing criticism of Dick Cheney had climbed over the top, it keeps reaching new heights.Case in point -- New Yorker magazine writer Jane Mayer appearing on Rachel Maddow's MSNBC cable show May 15 --MADDOW: We're trying to figure out the role of vice president Cheney's office here in part on the torture issue, the leadup to the invasion of Iraq. From your reporting, what…

Are the Fox News Channel and MSNBC bad for America?Such was implied on CNN's "Reliable Sources" Sunday when host Howard Kurtz invited the Baltimore Sun's David Zurawik, "USA Today Live's" Lauren Ashburn, and the BBC's Matt Frei on his program to discuss the "increasingly partisan nature of cable news." By the end of the conversation, Ashburn said "[T]he bottom line is this is not good for…

Clarity can come from unexpected places -- even that unlikeliest of sources, MSNBC.Such has been the case with a pair of recent guests on "The Rachel Maddow Show" who made a series of surprising statements -- albeit only in the context of MSNBC. Example one -- Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Colin Powell, appearing on Maddow's show May 12 and criticizing Dick Cheney's assertion that…

Kent Jones, a former Air America Radio humorist and writer for "The Daily Show," has his moments when he appears each weeknight on "The Rachel Maddow Show." But based on Jones' whopper of a claim about the movie "Casablanca," film criticism is not his forte.Here's what Jones said May 5 on Maddow's MSNBC show in describing recent articles by Stephen M. Walt and Daniel W. Drezner on the best films…

Newsweek investigative reporter and MSNBC contributor Michael Isikoff is willing to give credit where due to the Bush administration, provided it comes with a caveat.Isikoff appeared on Rachel Maddow's MSNBC cable show last Thursday to discuss al Qaeda sleeper agent Ali al-Marri pleading guilty in federal court to terrorism charges.While conceding this could be interpreted as Bush being "…

It's not often I hear three jaw-dropping claims in the course of a single day.On "The Rachel Maddow Show," this can happen in a matter of minutes, especially when author Ron Suskind is the guest.Suskind appeared on Maddow's MSNBC program on April 22 and wasted little time making dubious assertions stemming from the Senate Armed Services report that questioned the legality of al Qaeda…

Apparently viewers are getting tired of the cutsey, smugness that is Rachel Maddow, and not just a few of them either. Ratings for the already low rated Rachel Maddow show on MSNBC have shown a steep decline recently, falling from a high of 1.9 million viewers to "slightly over 1.1 million." Naturally, MSNBC President Phil Grifin is putting on the brave face calling Maddow a "rock star" and that…

How is it that MSNBC's Rachel Maddow toiled for years as a student before before earning a doctorate in political science at Oxford -- yet managed to avoid studying the American Civil War?  How else to explain Maddow's commentary last Thursday in response to tea party protests nationwide against dubious tax policy and runaway government spending?Here's what Maddow said in previewing an upcoming…

Talk about a divorced from reality headline! Check out this McClatchy Newspapers headline: "Liberal TV Host Rachel Maddow Works for Civility." The article itself, dateline Los Angeles by Rick Bentley, follows the lead of its fawning headline:MSNBC boasts Maddow has become the network's first program to beat CNN talker Larry King in more than a dozen years.Maddow had been hosting her own show for…

This journalism "thingy," a word used with cloying frequency by MSNBC political analyst Rachel Maddow, is proving problematic for the former Air America Radio host.On her cable show Tuesday night, Maddow informed viewers of "breaking news" that a terrorist suspect imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay had somehow called the Qatar-based Al Jazeera network on a cell phone.Here's how Maddow described it…