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On the front page of Thursday’s New York Times, reporter John Schwartz clumsily compared a very prim Fifties sitcom with the reality-show polygamist Kody Brown, who just won a court ruling in Utah in favor of their four-wife life as displayed on the TLC reality show "Sister Wives."  “In their first interview since the decision in that case, they presented a family whose polygamy is more ‘…

In the age of the perpetual campaign, it's never too early to push GOTV efforts, and in a Wednesday blog post, Daily Kos founder and publisher Markos Moulitsas did just that, exhorting his readers to get their fellow Democrats to register and, of course, to vote in this November's midterms. "Bottom line," wrote Kos, "if our people turn out, we win. It really is that simple. There are more of…

With Republicans tying themselves in knots over the Democrats' destructive, but superficially appealing, demand that unemployment benefits be extended to two and a half years, I return to my suggestion that Republicans stop playing defense and go on offense. For every issue that MSNBC loves to prattle on about, gloating that it will cost Republicans this or that demographic, there's an…

CNN's senior legal analyst doesn't think Benghazi is a scandal, but he is ready to dig Chris Christie's political grave over "Bridgegate." On Wednesday's AC 360 Later, Jeff Toobin remarked, "It's all over for Chris Christie. This is it. I'm sorry, totally." He added of Christie's controversy, "I mean, this is devastating. Forget it." [Video below the break. Audio here.]

"Obama approval ratings turn around," exulted the msnbc.com landing page headline for Traci G. Lee's January 9 story, "Positive start to 2014 for Obama: poll." Lee set about spinning the results of the latest Quinnipiac Poll, which shows President Obama sitting atop a 41 percent approval rating, up from a low of 38 percent in December, but still a net negative approval rating. Lee used the…

On Thursday's NBC Today, political director Chuck Todd reveled in the wall-to-wall media coverage of the bridge closing controversy surrounding New Jersey Governor Chris Christie: "Welcome to the NFL....he has gotten a lot of benefit by being sort of this Republican rising star in the New York City media markets, so he gets a lot of access to media attention, access to national media. And so he…

Hollywood tolerated John Milius until he did the unacceptable. He made a pro-U.S., pro-gun action movie attacking the USSR during the height of the Cold War. That crossed a line for the writer/director responsible for some of the most memorable films from his era, including Apocalypse Now, Dirty Harry and, of course, Red Dawn.

The same network evening news shows that ignored vindictiveness by the Obama administration during October's government shutdown were up in arms Wednesday over New Jersey Governor Chris Christie's "Bridgegate" and the possible tarring it could give his image. NewsBusters already counted 17 times more network coverage of Christie's controversy than of Obama's IRS scandal in the past six months…

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.

In the competition for most obvious Obama administration apparatchik at the Los Angeles Times (i.e., the biggest tool in the toolbox), Doyle McManus has to be considered a front-runner. As I noted on Tuesday (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), McManus, in a Sunday column, contended that "President Obama has run into his share of controversies, but none that quite reached scandalhood." He even…

After months of stonewalling the Justice Department finally named someone to head the investigation into the IRS-Tea Party scandal - and it's an Obama donor. So far ABC, CBS and NBC have yet to mention what Darrell Issa called “a startling conflict of interest.” In fact the Big Three networks have almost completely stopped covering the IRS scandal investigation altogether. Since July 1, ABC…

CNN's Ashleigh Banfield asserted on Thursday that the threat of a felony murder charge could be used to get information on the "bridgegate" surrounding New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. "And then there can also be the very serious possibility that a death resulted from the actions of someone, right?" Banfield said of the George Washington Bridge lane closures that Christie aides were…

  In less than 24 hours, the big three networks have devoted 17 times more coverage to a traffic scandal involving Chris Christie than they've allowed in the last six months to Barack Obama's Internal Revenue Service controversy. Since the story broke on Wednesday that aides to the New Jersey governor punished a local mayor's lack of endorsement with a massive traffic jam, ABC, CBS and NBC…