Latest Blogs

Was Bill Kristol kidding—just throwing a sop to the not-inconsiderable ego of his host—or could he have been serious?  On today's Morning Joe, unveiling his line-up of the nine Republicans he sees running for president in 2016, Kristol included none other than Joe Scarborough himself. But in an unkind cut to someone prospectively facing the famously conservative GOP primary electorate,…

With rapidly rising debt and an unprecedented credit downgrade, Puerto Rico is facing a looming default with terrifying implications on American bond markets, though you would never know about it watching broadcast news. The leading credit rating firm Standard & Poor’s Rating services downgraded Puerto Rican debt to “junk” status on Feb. 5, with further downgrades likely. Despite Puerto…

Journalists love to preen as human rights watchdogs, congratulating themselves publicly for their roles – real or imagined – in securing the life and liberty of the downtrodden. That is, as long as it’s the right sort of downtrodden.  Take, for example, NBC’s coverage in the run up to the Sochi Winter Olympics. Because of Russian restrictions on gays’ free speechfor homosexuals, the official…

Network frets over gays in the Games, ignores Syrian ethnic cleansing.

Modern Family is keeping and exposing secrets

On Tuesday’s Nightly News, NBC hyped a “scathing” United Nations report that ripped the Catholic church for covering up sexual abuse crimes. The report also pressed the church to change its teaching on birth control, abortion, and homosexuality. “Tonight, a scathing report by a United Nations human rights group has slammed the Vatican and the hierarchy of the Catholic church,” reported fill-…

On Saturday (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), I noted how the New York Times had made a critical change to a story about New Jersey Governor Chris Christie's possible knowledge of lane closures in the area of the George Washington Bridge. The initial story was that a Port Authority official "has evidence" in the matter. A short time later, that claim was watered down to a far more speculative "…

One of my favorite memories from watching MSNBC -- not that there are many -- came a few years back when Rachel Maddow in full-blown, arms-waving smarm insisted that the Constitution does not have a preamble. "That would be the Declaration of Independence," Maddow declared emphatically. It's one thing for an MSNBC pundit to publicly reveal her ignorance of the Constitution (and Maddow made…

Michael McAuliff, a former New York Daily News reporter who now writes for the liberal Huffington Post website, stated on Wednesday that people who oppose the Affordable Care Act refer to a report released by the Congressional Budget Office that the shift of full-time employees to part-time work would result in employees losing working hours equivalent to about 2.5 million jobs during the next…

In a world where Woody Allen can get a lifetime achievement award at the Golden Globes at the same time his adopted daughter accuses him of sexually abusing her when she was a child (Allen has repeatedly denied it), and where a film "The Wolf of Wall Street" sets a record for use of the F-word, it is a wonderment that an obscure, low-budget film called "Alone Yet Not Alone" has had its Best…

Back on January 28, Comedy Central's The Daily Show ran a piece on the minimum wage debate where guest Peter Schiff, opposing a minimum wage increase, appeared to be the heartless villain. Now Schiff is calling out the show for running a "hit job" on him. "After watching 'The Daily Show' segment for the first time since it aired, I realized it was an even bigger hit job than I first realized…

Philadelphia's public school system has joined several other big-city school systems, such as those in Atlanta, Detroit and Washington, D.C., in widespread teacher-led cheating on standardized academic achievement tests. So far, the city has fired three school principals, and The Wall Street Journal reports, "Nearly 140 teachers and administrators in Philadelphia public schools have been…

Yesterday afternoon three red state Democratic senators -- plus Rep. John Barrow (D-Ga.) -- joined a number of Republican legislators and the Canadian ambassador to the United States at a press conference called to publicly press President Obama to approve the long-delayed Keystone XL oil pipeline. Such a show of bipartisan and international agreement on an economic-development issue is…

  Liberal MSNBC anchor Ed Shultz incurred the wrath of his left-wing audience when he publicly came out in support of the construction of the Keystone pipeline. The host on Wednesday took the step of reading angry tweets on the Ed Show and responding to them. Aware that he was daring to leave the liberal reservation on this one issue, Schultz called the pipeline "controversial" and began, "…