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Two "alert" emails hit my inbox this morning concerning the Department of Labor's just-released unemployment claims report. The one I expected came from CNNMoney.com, which read: "Initial unemployment claims fall below 400,000 for the first time in more than 3 months, dropping 24,000 to 398,000 in latest week." The other one came from USAToday.com, which does not ordinarily issue alerts when…

Shortly after noon today, MSNBC's Contessa Brewer followed her colleague Chuck Todd in using the anniversary of the 14th Amendment becoming law to cite the liberal fantasy of a clause in the amendment empowering President Obama to end-run Congress on raising the debt ceiling. Like Todd she got her history and the text of the relevant clause wrong. This occurred during a satellite interview…

On Wednesday's NBC Nightly News, Capitol Hill correspondent Kelly O'Donnell declared the delayed vote on House Speaker John Boehner's debt ceiling plan "took precious little time," and touted how "Democrats filled the time with sharp words." A sound bite was featured from Tennessee Congressman Steve Cohen: "I've had kidney stones that are easier to pass than this." O'Donnell focused…

First it was her migraines, then it was the cost of her hair and makeup, and now it's correlating her anti-gay views to bullying and suicides in a school district she represents. Rep. Michele Bachmann has in many ways become the new Sarah Palin as a prominent female target the media love to hate. Even when she responds to her critics, they don't seem to go away. Bachmann suffers from…

After only his third day on the job, Fox News senior White House correspondent Ed Henry was accused by White House Press Secretary Jay Carney of intentionally "creating" a dispute to please his new employer. "I know you're creating a thing here for Fox," charged Carney toward the end of a testy exchange with the former CNN correspondent during Wednesday's press briefing. As members of the…

In a critical "Keeping Them Honest" segment Wednesday night, CNN's Anderson Cooper selectively reported findings from his network's own poll to bolster his argument that Republicans are out-of-touch with the wishes of the American people in the debt ceiling debate. This came even after the Democrat Senate Majority Leader, supported by the president, produced a plan including no tax increases…

At a hearing of the House Committee on Homeland Security today about the radicalization of young Somali American Muslims by the al-Shabaab terrorist group, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) said the committee should hold a hearing on “right-wing extremists” in the United States. Jackson Lee used much of her allotted five minutes to question panelists with expertise on radicalization about the…

Would Senator Barack Obama disagree with the actions and statements of President Barack Obama? That question gets a closer look in the video ‘The Great Debate’. Among the issues touched on is President Obama’s current decision to have the Attorney General’s office on the Defense Of Marriage Act (DOMA). 

Peter Goodman, the former Times left-wing economics writer  who is now business editor at the Huffington Post, called Republicans terrorists in a Monday column. The Observer’s Kat Stoeffel explained: Huffington Post Business Editor Peter Goodman wrote a provocative column today. It was no Esquire “Have More Satisfying Sex Than DSK”, but it did compare Republicans to terrorists. “The same…

Good Morning America's Nick Watt on Thursday launched into a mocking attack on CNN host Piers Morgan and his role in the British hacking scandal. With barely restrained glee, Watt gloated, "The tide of scandal is now lapping into the well-pressed pant cuffs of the man who took Larry King's chair and the America's Got Talent self-proclaimed loud mouth." Watt played an audio clip from a 2009…

Update: According to the Library of Congress website, July 28, 1868 was the day when Secretary of State William Seward "issued a proclamation certifying without reservation that the Fourteenth Amendment was a part of the United States Constitution." Todd told his viewers that July 28, 1868 was the day the amendment "officially became part of the U.S. Constitution" although Article V of the U.S…

Bradlee Dean, a Christian ministry founder, conservative radio host, and rock drummer has sued Rachel Maddow for claiming he advocated execution of gays on his radio show in May 2010. Dean is seeking "in excess" of $50 million in damages and stated in his lawsuit that reporting by Maddow and the Minnesota Independent's Andy Birkey has harmed his reputation, hurt his livelihood, and led to…

Global warming, aka climate change, is the scapegoat for everything from record snowfalls to disastrous tornadoes. As such, it is also the perfect route for governments to closely control their citizens by regulating the smallest of details, like which lightbulbs they are allowed to use, to supposedly fix the problem. Czech President Vaclav Klaus, who grew up under totalitarian rule, is…

Wednesday’s “Lessons From The Malaise” is David Leonhardt’s last economics column before becoming the New York Times's Washington bureau chief. It pretty much encapsulates his liberal worldview, while assuming his premises are universally shared. One of the tricky things about the subject is that almost nothing is certain in the way that, say, two plus two equals four. Economics -- which is…