Gainor Column: Media Can't Decide Whether Espionage is Journalism

Imagine the year is 1942 and the German government runs a news bureau in Washington, D.C. collecting government secrets. Even FDR would have laughed at claims they were actual journalists, locked them up and thrown away the key. He would have been right. There's a huge difference between an individual or an organization reporting abuses in government or business one at a time and the same…
Dan Gainor

Saturday Open Thread

For general discussion and debate about politics, the economy, sports, and whatever else tickles your fancy.
NB Staff

Burning Styleite Question: 'Why Isn’t Sarah Palin Selling More Cloth

Justin Fenner at Styleite needs to buy a clue or two about how women who like Sarah Palin think and act, and about Palin herself. In a post late Friday afternoon, he asked, "Why Isn’t Sarah Palin Selling More Clothes?" (bolds are mine):
Tom Blumer

Bozell Column: The Diseases of Pornography

Derrick Burts, 24, started working as a porn-film actor in June. By October, he'd contracted the HIV virus. The AP story on Burts contained this jaw-dropping sentence: “He said he began to have doubts about the business after contracting chlamydia, gonorrhea, and herpes in his first month of work, but was convinced to keep working.” Burts claimed "I wasn't stupid or oblivious, I knew what…
Brent Bozell

As Obama Bizarrely Walks Away From Presser, AP's Feller Waxes Nostalgi

Not that he legitimately deserves our pity, but imagine the difficulty of being Ben Feller at the Associated Press yesterday. You've just attended a suddenly announced joint press conference with President Barack Obama and former president Bill Clinton to announce the latter's support for the former's tax- and spending-related legislative proposals worked out with Republicans. You witness the…
Tom Blumer

Joy Behar, Narnia Numbskull

On Thursday's edition of The View, Joy Behar displayed how little she knows Sarah Palin's favorite authors. As they discussed Palin's answer to Barbara Walters asking what she reads, and Walters said Palin reads C.S. Lewis for "divine inspiration," Behar asked "Aren't those children's books?" She wasn't joking, but she obviously liked the idea that Palin wasn't smart enough to read "adult…
Tim Graham

WaPo Thumps 2012 Hopeful Rick Santorum as 'Notorious for His Moral Pro

Washington Post political reporter Karen Tumulty explored the dark-horse presidential explorations of former Sen. Rick Santorum on the front page of Friday's paper. It was a fairly respectful story until it came time to discuss the former senator's “notorious” moral statements, and how he still “breathes fire” on occasion: Santorum was notorious for his moral pronouncements. He contended, for…
Tim Graham

Ed Schultz Scurries From Challenge by Quickly Bailing on Caller to Rad

A profile in courage he's not. Ed Schultz, the MSNBC pundit most likely to seek a career in professional wrestling, showed what he's made of during a call to his radio show Wednesday (audio here) --
Jack Coleman

Matthews: McConnell Should Be Time's Man of the Year, They Pick 'Awful

Chris Matthews on Friday said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell should be Time magazine's Man of the Year for engineering a "disgusting strategy" that forced Obama to the left and made the President look like a socialist. "Time magazine’s picked people pretty awful," claimed the "Hardball" host. "I’m not mentioning their names…Hitler" (video follows with transcript and commentary): 
Noel Sheppard

Jami Floyd Demonizes GOP's 'Bah! Humbug!' Tax Compromise, Plots Obama

Jami "Sarah Palin is an extraordinary ass" Floyd made her best pitch for an Obama White House gig this morning, charting a course for the president's rehabilitation before the 2012 election and chastising the Republicans's "Bah! Humbug!" tax compromise. Chris Jansing, anchor of MSNBC's "Jansing & Co.," asked Floyd to assess the argument some Democrats are making that the president should…
Alex Fitzsimmons

Bolivian President Calls for Death of Capitalism, Climate Tribunal

Evo Morales Cancun summit speech reveals radical anti-capitalist intentions of warming movement.
Julia A. Seymour

Liberal Columnist Mike Barnicle: Obama 'Deified' in '08, Media 'Largel

Liberal columnist Mike Barnicle confessed Friday that the media "deified" Barack Obama during his 2008 Presidential campaign. Both Barnicle and former MSNBC host Donny Deutsch, on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," admitted that Obama had no executive experience when he took office as president and that hurt him in his first two years in the Oval Office. "This guy took office, he had never really run…
Matt Hadro

Newsweek Notes Anarchists 'Hijacking the Students' Cause' in London De

Most of the news coverage I've seen of yesterday's violent demonstrations against a hike in tuition fees in London's Parliament Square portrayed it as a show of strength of student protesters. Yet while there were doubtless numerous students protesting, left-wing and anarchist groups have easily glommed onto the occasion to hijack formerly peaceful demonstrations for their trouble-making…
Ken Shepherd

Chris Matthews Slams '300 Plus' Pounds Chris Christie, Too Fat to be P

Hardball host Chris Matthews appeared at a local event in Washington D.C. on Thursday to trash Republican Chris Christie as too fat to be President. The Washington Examiner reported that Matthews derided the New Jersey governor, mocking, "Chris Christie is moon over New Jersey, he should not wear white shirts, I tell you that." He continued, "I saw him the other day and I was amazed by it, he…
Scott Whitlock