Latest Blogs

In his coverage of the Department of Labor's weekly report on unemployment claims this morning, the Associated Press's Christopher Rugaber, after noting how initial claims filed by Communications Workers of America members who are on strike against Verizon (more on that later) inflated this week's and last week's results, wrote that "excluding the work stoppage, layoffs appear to be stabilizing…

... And no, it isn't "Flamethrower," though that was my first guess. Radio talker and MSNBC cable host Ed Schultz told his radio listeners Tuesday that President Obama has a nickname for him, or at least one that Obama is willing to disclose to Schultz.

Alas, we lost a most desirable candidate for the White House this week, one that is not charismatic, did not write (or have someone else write) his memoir, has displayed no jump shot in public and did not leave important documents on his desk while gallivanting around the country in campaign mode and heading for vacation on Martha's Vineyard. In the first instance, I am talking about…

According to Hardball guest host Ron Reagan, former Vice President Dick Cheney is a "war criminal" for endorsing waterboarding. On Thursday, the son of the former President attacked, "But the fact of the matter is...[Cheney's] a war criminal. Torture is a crime and this is a guy who can't travel to Europe anymore for fear of being- ending up in the Hague." Reagan was commenting on a new…

The company whose unofficial motto is "Don't Be Evil," apparently has a new commandment: Thou shalt not give discounts to churches. Tech giant Google has an entire suite of software, Google Apps,that it offers for businesses and non-profits. It used to be that Google offered the software, including GMail, for free or at a discount for non-profits, including churches. But back in March, the…

The U.S. Department of Interior announced this week that it is giving $2,426,055 to the state of Maryland to help protect the habitat of the Puritan tiger beetle, a threatened insect that inhabits beaches and bluffs along Chesapeake Bay in Maryland as well as along the Connecticut River in New England. The $2.4 million grant, which will be paid to the State of Maryland Department of Natural…

Political, media powers angry at grassroots Americans for getting involved.

Bill Keller’s upcoming column for the New York Times’s Sunday magazine, “Asking Candidates Tougher Questions About Faith,” raised familiar liberal paranoia about the conservative religious views of Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney, Michele Bachmann, and Rick Perry. The official headline for the upcoming print edition: “Not Just Between Them and Their God.” Keller had no time for…

London’s Daily Mail reported on a screening of the forthcoming Meryl Streep film The Iron Lady about Margaret Thatcher: “At the end of the film, Lady Thatcher walks around her home in a feverish state, driven mad by nightmares about her record in office.” “Friends of Margaret Thatcher last night expressed their revulsion,” reported the Mail, saying the film “shows her having nightmares about…

Linda Greenhouse, former Supreme Court reporter for the New York Times, posted her twice-monthly column Wednesday evening, on the dangers of today’s conservative Supreme Court going “Over the Cliff” in defending...the right to free speech. You read that correctly: A liberal Times reporter is faulting a conservative Supreme Court for being on a "dangerous path" and showing "arid absolutism" by…

Referencing Dick Cheney's revelation in his new memoir that he urged President Bush to bomb a Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007, CNN's Kyra Phillips posed this obnoxious question to her panel: "Was Cheney even more of a hawk than we gave him credit for?" The upcoming release of Cheney's memoir, "In My Time," should re-ignite the media's decade-long war on the former Vice President, as he…

What Would You Do?, an ABC News hidden camera program that often engineers scenarios to expose the supposed bigotry of Americans, was asked on Wednesday to stop filming by the town of Greenwich, Connecticut. The ABC program uses a hidden camera to see how people react. On February 4, 2011, host John Quinones explained how the show hired an actor to play a security guard and pretend to harass…

In the latest in a series of snipes from reporter Ashley Parker directed at Republican candidate Mitt Romney, a brief “Caucus” item in Thursday’s New York Times, “Romney Stands By Corporations Remarks,” suggested Romney’s remark to a heckler that “corporations are people, my friend” made him look like “an out-of-touch millionaire.” But isn't Romney right? (Parker’s article first appeared in a…