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Uniquely among the broadcast network evening newscasts, on Tuesday's NBC Nightly News, anchor Brian Williams noted that today is the 25th anniversary of President Reagan calling on Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev to demolish the Berlin Wall, as Reagan stood in Berlin on June 12, 1987, and delivered his famous "Tear down this wall" speech. Williams read the brief item:

Les Moonves, the president and CEO of CBS, took his wife, the former CBS news anchor Julie Chen, on a date on June 6 – to a star-studded Beverly Hills Democratic Party fundraiser starring President Obama. He told a reporter for the Los Angeles Times of his respect for Obama, whom he said “has shown great leadership”  – by bringing his support for gay marriage out of the closet. Did I mention…

CRITICAL UPDATE AT END OF POST. Joy Behar, Al Gore's new employee at Current TV, said Tuesday in response to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's comments on the need for more police, teachers, and firefighters, "I’d like to see his house burn, one of his millions of houses burning down." During an interview with the liberal website Mediaite, Behar added, "Who's he going to call…

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is attracting lots of media attention Bush for claiming that even conservative hero Ronald Reagan would struggle in today's Republican Party, a Tea Party-infused "orthodoxy that doesn’t allow for disagreement." New York Times Political reporter Jim Rutenberg was intrigued: "Jeb Bush Offers Critical Views of Modern Republican Party and Its 'Orthodoxy.'" The online…

The weekday edition of CBS Evening News with anchor Scott Pelley bizarrely paid no attention to the campaign finance trial of 2004 Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards until the jury declared a mistrial on all but one count on May 31, 2012. By contrast, the evening news program devoted a full report to the first day of the trial of former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry…

A new economic report from the Federal Reserve doesn't offer much hope. On the front page of The Washington Post,  Ylan Q. Mui underlined "the Federal Reserve said the median net worth of families plunged by 39 percent in just three years, from $126,400 in 2007 to $77,300 in 2010. That puts Americans roughly on par with where they were in 1992."    Furthermore, "the data represent[s] one of…

Chris Matthews on Tuesday's Hardball gave viewers a preview of what's going to happen on MSNBC the next five months any time a poll comes in showing Mitt Romney leading President Obama. "In North Carolina a new PPP poll has Romney up by two - that’s not good" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

If Attorney General Eric Holder’s goal was to minimize broadcast network news coverage when he chose late Friday evening to announce a criminal investigation into how damaging national security secrets were released to the New York Times, the media have certainly played along. Holder announced the investigation after the East Coast feeds of Friday’s ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts. While…

How much power does the president actually possess? That is a question at the heart of most debates about the federal government. Declaring war, writing executive orders, legislating, allocating taxpayers' money and even influencing what your children learn and eat are just a very small sample of subjects hotly under dispute right now.

The BuzzFeed Website carried an article on Monday based on an interview with former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush in which he said that his father, George H. W. Bush, and Ronald Reagan would have a difficult time getting nominated by today's “ultra-conservative” Republican Party in a “hyper-partisan moment.” The only problem is that Bush never used the words “ultra-conservative” or “hyper-partisan”in…

MSNBC's Martin Bashir asked a deliciously ironic question of one of his guests Tuesday that I'd like to take the liberty of answering for Americans across the fruited plain. "Does Mitt Romney believe we are all imbeciles who can’t be bothered to check the facts?" (video follows with commentary):

At the top of his Tuesday MSNBC morning show The Daily Rundown, NBC chief White House correspondent and political director Chuck Todd cited the Romney campaign's refusal to release a list of top fundraising bundlers as evidence that "if he wins in November, Romney could very well be the least transparent president in a generation." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump] Todd…

Shortly before the close of her Jansing & Co. program today, MSNBC morning anchor Chris Jansing informed viewers of 90-year-old comedienne Betty White's visit and photo-op with President Obama in the Oval Office on Monday. Jansing made it sound as though White's visit was a simple apolitical courtesy call before the nonagenarian actress gave a speech at the Smithsonian, and it may well…

In a rural area where “The economy sucks when it’s good,” natural gas drilling could have gone a long way. Could have, until environmental extremists and regulators got in the way. That’s what happened in Wayne County, Pa., just a few years ago when “corporations offered struggling farmers lucrative leases for mineral rights” but a documentary filmmaker and government prevented the drilling…