Open Thread

For general discussion and debate. Possible talking point: You tell us.
NB Staff

Norah O'Donnell: ACORN Video 'Might Be Viewed As Entrapment

Entrapment n. In criminal law, the act of law enforcement officers or government agents inducing or encouraging a person to commit a crime when the potential criminal expresses a desire not to go ahead. The key to entrapment is whether the idea for the commission or encouragement of the criminal act originated with the police or government agents instead of with the "criminal."It's turning into…
Mark Finkelstein

WaPo Patrick Swayze Obit Gets to His Drag-Queen Movie Before 'Red Dawn

Tim Graham

Chuck Todd Suggests Covering Van Jones Waste Of MSM Time

I've been trying to give Chuck Todd the benefit of the doubt when it comes to classifying him as part of what Rush would call the state-controlled media. But that indulgence was strained to the breaking point on Morning Joe today when Todd flatly rejected the notion that the MSM had under-covered the Van Jones story and suggested that delving into his background would have been a waste of MSM…
Mark Finkelstein

Washington Examiner's Carney Rips MSNBC Host for Denigrating 9-12 Marc

You might have figured this was coming, that when dust settled from the Sept. 12 march on Washington, D.C., the brain trust at MSNBC would attempt to frame it as negatively as possible. And MSNBC's resident left-wing curmudgeon-in-training David Shuster didn't disappoint. The former host of the canceled "1600 Pennsylvania Avenue" took a report from the Huffington Post debunking attendance…
Jeff Poor

ABC Plugs a Swirling Tom DeLay on 'Dancing with the Stars

Brent Baker

The Rush Limbaugh Proposition: Take the Next Conservative Protest to t

There's no doubt the so-called mainstream media turned their collective noses up at the Sept. 12 march on Washington, D.C. to protest the policies of Democratic-controlled federal government - whether in the form of denigration, downplay or outright ignoring the event. However, conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh has suggested a different tactic. On his Sept. 14 show, Limbaugh proposed a…
Jeff Poor

Crutsinger's Crud, Part 3: AP Again Erroneously Cites Cost of Wars As

Somebody really needs to find the Associated Press's Martin Crutsinger some OCD therapy. It seems that he has a not-magnificent obsession with the two major theaters of the War on Terror (yeah, I still call it that), and that he seemingly won't be able to conquer it without outside intervention. In his report on August's federal budget deficit, the AP reporter continued to cite the wars in Iraq…
Tom Blumer

CNN's Situation Room Charges: 'Racial Tinge to Tea Movement

CNN's efforts to smear Obama critics as racist gained visibility on Monday's Situation Room when the usually more sensible Wolf Blitzer, with “RACIAL TINGE TO TEA MOVEMENT” as the on-screen heading, set up a story on how, “most disturbing,” within the tea party crowds there's “a very small but vocal minority, they're targeting President Obama's race.” Though reporter Elaine Quijano said “we have…
Brent Baker

Open Thread: Senate Votes to Stop Funding ACORN

NB Staff

Leftwing Blogosphere Dreams Up Bizarre Conspiracy Theories to Explain

The leftwing blogosphere has been trying to convince themselves and others that the attendance at the 9/12 Washington, D.C. Tea Party was fairly small. However, there is one really big problem for them. How to explain away a highly inconvenient time lapse video from a camera showing massive numbers of Tea Party folks parading down Pennsylvania Avenue (video below the fold). The way they get…
P.J. Gladnick

Liberals Manage to Find Classism in Williams's Tantrum

Who would have thought Karl Marx would rear his ugly head at the US Open. But some liberals just could not help attributing Serena Williams's match-ending outburst in her semifinal match against Kim Clijsters to class warfare.Here's what happened. Williams supposedly foot-faulted on her second serve to put Clijsters one point away from the match. Rather than challenging the call or sucking it up…
Lachlan Markay

Chris Matthews Show: 'Boss Rush Limbaugh' Stoking Racist Anti-Obama 'V

NBC's Norah O'Donnell, guest hosting for Chris Matthews over the weekend, repeatedly questioned her "Chris Matthews Show" panelists why there was "So much hate," and "venom," directed at Barack Obama at town hall events.Time's Joe Klein responded it was all Rush Limbaugh's fault as he depicted opponents of Obama as racists that are "being egged on by the demagogues in, in the Republican Party, by…
Geoffrey Dickens

CNN Zeroes-In on 'Dark Undercurrent' of Tea Parties

CNN’s Jim Spellman did his best to paint the participants of the Tea Party Express’s rallies across the nation in late August and early September as a bunch of extremists on Saturday’s Newsroom. Spellman played clips which zeroed-in on the protesters who called President Obama a Nazi, carried guns, or forwarded “outlandish conspiracy theories,” and labeled all of them “a dark undercurrent.”The…
Matthew Balan