NPR, NY Times Contributor Compares Santorum to Harvey Milk's Assassin

The attacks on former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) were bound to increase following his strong second place showing in last night's Iowa caucuses. "Rick Santorum has Dan White-eyes," noted NPR and New York Times contributor Mark Allen this afternoon in a tweet. Dan White, you may recall, was the San Francisco Supervisor who assassinated openly gay San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk in…
Ken Shepherd
January 4th, 2012 4:29 PM

WaPo Editorial Board Capitalizes on Park Ranger Shooting to Lament 'Ea

Well, that didn't take long. It took the Washington Post just four days into the new year to exploit a murder to bewail "easy access to firearms." In "Taking off the safety," the Post editorial board today admitted that while "[t]here is no way to know whether tougher gun restrictions would have prevented" Benjamin Colton Barnes from obtaining the gun with which he murdered U.S. National Park…
Ken Shepherd
January 4th, 2012 3:38 PM

NYT Editorial Page Editor Calls Boehner Racist for Asking Obama to Del

Is House Speaker John Boehner an anti-Obama racist? Editorial Page editor Andrew Rosenthal all but accuses him in his Tuesday blog from Des Moines, “Nobody Likes to Talk About It, but It’s There.” (The web headline is blunter: “Republican Attacks Have Racist Undertones.”) Actually, Rosenthal is all too happy to talk about racist Republicans if it helps Democrats politically, as he did on…
Clay Waters
January 4th, 2012 3:34 PM

CBS Promoted 'Humanized' Hillary in '08; Hounds Romney in

CBS revealed its double standard in its treatment of Republican presidential candidates versus Democratic ones on Wednesday's Early Show, as Jim Axelrod and Nancy Cordes pressed Mitt Romney about the challenges ahead in the race the day after he won in Iowa. By contrast, then-anchor Katie Couric gushed over a "humanized" and "emotional" Hillary Clinton the day after the 2008 New Hampshire…
Matthew Balan
January 4th, 2012 3:09 PM

Speak No Evil: Planned Parenthood Flush with Federal Cash, Protected b

While ABC, CBS and NBC kept its scandals quiet, abortion group raked in 34 percent more federal money in 2011.
Paul Wilson
January 4th, 2012 3:07 PM

NYT Eagerly Printed Wikileaks Military Secrets, But Takes Side of Gove

Some document leaks are more equal than others in New York Times-land, as demonstrated by reporter Leslie Kaufman’s snooty story Monday on the latest installment of Climate-gate, “Police Inquiry Prompts New Speculation on Who Leaked Climate-Change E-Mails.” Unlike the paper’s standard eagerness to splash sensitive diplomatic secrets on the front page during the Wikileaks saga, the Times took…
Clay Waters
January 4th, 2012 2:30 PM

CNN's O'Brien to Romney: Won't Your Immigration Stance Drive Latinos t

CNN's Soledad O'Brien tried to make race an issue on Tuesday where there was no conflict to begin with, and she continued thumping Republicans over immigration on Wednesday. O'Brien asked candidate Mitt Romney if he was simply driving Latino voters to Obama with his immigration stance, and brought up the issue again in a later interview. In her interview with Romney, O'Brien cited his…
Matt Hadro
January 4th, 2012 1:41 PM

Lawrence O'Donnell Gets It Wrong - Twice Over - About First-Time Presi

Warning: Sweeping pontifical claims ahead from Lawrence O'Donnell. Best taken with shaker of salt. As is his wont, O'Donnell was holding forth last night during MSNBC's coverage of the Iowa caucuses, making not one but two statements of alleged fact that went beyond dubious to flat-out inaccurate (video after page break) --
Jack Coleman
January 4th, 2012 12:41 PM

NBC's Brokaw Touts 'Moderate' Iowan Standing Up to 'Hardline' GOP

On Tuesday's NBC Nightly News, correspondent Tom Brokaw asked Perry, Iowa resident Eddie Diaz: "Were you accepted right away by the community?" Brokaw explained: "Diaz is a Perry high school teacher, part of a growing Hispanic population....Eddie could go elsewhere, but he likes Perry, which he says is more moderate, politically and culturally, than the candidates realize." Brokaw touted how…
Kyle Drennen
January 4th, 2012 12:36 PM

NPR: Santorum Surging Because He's 'Very, Very Conservative

At the same time that the nation's leading networks can't call Obama a "liberal" more than about once a year, NPR's religion reporter Barbara Bradley Hagerty on Monday announced Rick Santorum was "very, very conservative" on the social issues, in addition to being "very pro-life." He even -- horrors! -- home-schools his seven children. "He's Catholic. He's billed himself very much as the…
Tim Graham
January 4th, 2012 11:45 AM

Stephanopoulos' Spin: Romney's 'Reassuring' of Conservatives Will 'Tur

Former top Democratic operative turned journalist George Stephanopoulos on Wednesday wondered if Mitt Romney's attempt to "reassure" conservative voters would end up "turning off" moderates and independent voters in a general election. [See video below. MP3 audio here.] Interviewing the Republican presidential candidate on "Good Morning America," Stephanopoulos offered spin about…
Scott Whitlock
January 4th, 2012 11:23 AM

Speak No Evil: Planned Parenthood Protected by Networks

What does Planned Parenthood have to do for a mention on the network news? The group provides services abhorred by much of the American population and it has been riddled with scandal recently. But according to the abortion group's latest figures, its intake of federal tax dollars up by more than a third, and that 90 percent of its government funding comes from federal money. Sounds like a…
Paul Wilson
January 4th, 2012 10:35 AM

Another New York Times Reporter Celebrates Obama's 'Oratorical Gifts

New York Times reporter Mark Landler, with President Obama in Honolulu, filed “Obama Still Lets Surrogates Take the Lead as Gay Rights Momentum Builds” for Sunday’s paper. Like his colleague Ashley Parker did in her own Sunday Times story, Landler celebrated Obama’s oratory, but right at the beginning of his story, on the president keeping his support for gay marriage at an official arms…
Clay Waters
January 4th, 2012 9:57 AM

Halperin: Santorum Might Have Media 'Rooting For Him

It's hard to imagine the media rooting, even "cheering" for a social conservative like Rick Santorum.  But two certified MSMers claim that Santorum does have the potential to attract such unlikely support. On today's Morning Joe, Mark Halperin and John Heilemann, co-authors of the best-selling Game Change about the 2008 election, both opined that Santorum, given his appealing blue-collar…
Mark Finkelstein
January 4th, 2012 7:27 AM