Latest Blogs

The Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday reported upside revisions to the number of jobs that were created in last year's fourth quarter. Appearing on CNBC's Squawk Box, Austan Goolsbee, the former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under Barack Obama, joked, "It’s an elaborate left-wing plot to make the numbers much better several months after the election so that nobody thinks…

Sure, Chuck Hagel might have been a bumbling, stumbling mess at his confirmation hearing yesterday.  But the real story was how awful were the Republicans who questioned him.  That was the collective judgment of today's Morning Joe panel. For example, so contemptuous was Joe Scarborough of Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, that the Morning Joe host announced that he would not even mention him by…

The Bureau of  Labor Statistics released jobs numbers for January Friday showing that nonfarm payroll employment increased by 157,000 and the unemployment rate rose to 7.9 percent. Lost in these headline numbers was another rise in the number of people not in the labor force.

Glen Johnson, formerly the politics editor for Boston.com, the website of the Boston Globe, has become the latest journalist to join the Obama Administration working as a senior adviser for new secretary of state John Kerry. In a hilariously self-unaware press release, Kerry is quoted touting Johnson's supposed neutrality. Even though his new senior aide has accepted a political appointment…

The tumult at CNN that has seen several contributors leave the cable news network continued on Wednesday, when Soledad O'Brien's morning show, “Starting Point,” was canceled because her program's small audience was “too ethnic, based on the high concentration of minority viewers.” Despite ending O'Brien's morning show, a CNN spokesman told Politico on Thursday that "Soledad is very important…

Darn that economy. Why won't it behave? Doesn't it realize that Barack Obama has more important things to do than worry about its health and well-being? That's the tone I get from a story headline at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, about how "ECONOMIC JITTERS COMPETE WITH OBAMA AGENDA." The poor guy; he has to pay attention to something he must have thought he could keep…

Let's see. Last week, USA Today reported that "A federal court delivered a defeat to the biofuels industry Friday, ruling the U.S. government exceeded its authority by requiring refiners to purchase cellulosic biofuel despite the fact the next-generation fuel is not commercially available." Specifically, the court ruled, in Hebert's words that "the Environmental Protection Agency had 'the…

Someone needs to tell Dylan Byers at the Politico that the 2012 presidential smear campaign is over, and their guy won. Byers seems not to have gotten the memo, and is still engaged in associating Mitt Romney with the firm he left in 1999 any time it has involvement in decisions relating to layoffs. In the current instance, Bain was engaged as an advisor to a new CEO at Time Inc. -- meaning…

In the days of the late Mike Wallace, "60 Minutes" was known for hard-hitting, aggressive journalism that asked the questions viewers wanted answered and held the powerful accountable. The Jan. 27 program on which Steve Kroft interviewed President Obama (at his request, no less) and outgoing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton fell far short of that high standard. It was the kind of softball…

Apart from finding out that Barack Obama did far worse in his re-election than nearly any other incumbent who won re-election, the only thing that perked me up after Nov. 6 was coming across a Time magazine published after the 2004 election, when George W. Bush won a second term. In the mirror image of all the 2012 post-election analyses, the Democrats were said to be finished, out of ideas,…

MSNBC's Chris Matthews on Thursday assailed John McCain, slamming the "boiling hatred" aimed at Chuck Hagel, Barack Obama's Defense Secretary nominee. Matthews sneered, "Hatred, pure and simple, seeped from the mouths of John McCain and Lindsay Graham as they slashed away at war hero Hagel." (McCain is also a war hero. Graham is a veteran. Are those with military experience only allowed to…

Ben Cosgrove of Time magazine's sister publication Life penned a piece today concerning gun safety in the 1950s, saying it was important for historical context about the gun control debate in today's political environment. The Life editor dusted off a March 1956 Life story on an Indiana conservation officer teaching grade school children basic gun safety, using real shotguns and bolt-action…

ABC's Diane Sawyer on Wednesday pushed the pro-gun control angle as she highlighted the debate in Congress over a "nation awash in guns." After World News reporter Jon Karl recapped the testimony by the National Rifle Association's Wayne LaPierre and Gabby Giffords, Sawyer lectured, "...There are two facts driving those hearings today. Thirty Americans die from gun violence in this country…

Yet another example of why I've long referred to Mike Malloy as the Voice of the Guard in the Gulag. Bad enough that this most creepy and vampiric of men can barely let consecutive sentences pass without reference to carnage and bloodshed. On his radio show Tuesday, Malloy slandered Sen. John McCain as a war criminal who murdered civilians during the Vietnam War and was justifiably tortured…