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 In spite of former MSNBC host Keith Olbermann’s history of using distortion and even misinformation to attack conservatives, and his infamously recurring conspiracy theory that the Bush administration made terrorism-related announcements to distract from politically embarrassing news, CNN host Howard Kurtz on Sunday’s Reliable Sources defended Olbermann’s Countdown show and MSNBC generally…

We all know that since Barack Obama was elected, dissent has gone from being the highest form of patriotism, as those liberal bumper-stickers liked to remind us, to being downright unpatriotic, as we've chronicled here and here. Robert Reich has now added another item to the list of things that are unpatriotic: resenting higher taxes if you're rich.  Not that Cenk Uygur has to worry.  He has…

Time's Ten Questions to Robert Redford drew some silly answers -- like Redford denying he's a lefty. How helpful or harmful to your career has it been to be known as someone who is passionate about politics? I am passionate. I am political about my country, about what it is, how strong it is, how strong it remains. [My last film,] Lions for Lambs, got rough treatment, and I think it was…

MSNBC's Ed Schultz began his show Monday talking about all the jobs President Obama has created since he took office. Unfortunately, as he made the case about how terrible the Bush years were by comparison, the "Ed Show" host wrongly informed his viewers that Democrats took over in January 2009 (video follows with transcript and commentary):

On February 24, Washington Post reporter John Wagner sympathetically covered leading Maryland Democrats (and Catholics) for crossing their hierarchy to lobby for "gay marriage" -- without seeming to contact this hierarchy. So when Wagner sympathetically profiled House Speaker Michael Busch -- again -- at the top of the April 11 Style section, the primary question was: How was this "news," a…

I sure hope that the Associated Press's Jim Kuhnhenn has been working out, especially in his upper body. The volume of water he's having to carry for the Obama administration as a dutiful member of the state-compliant establishment press has to be getting very heavy. This evening, Kuhnhenn and his wire service are expecting the AP's readers -- and ultimately its subscribing media outlets'…

MSNBC's Chris Matthews on Monday spent much of show scaring viewers about Congressman Paul Ryan's (R-Wisc.) recently released budget proposal. So apoplectic was the "Hardball" host that he told liberal guests Howard Fineman and Richard Wolffe that Ryan's Medicare reform plan "is going to kill half the people who watch this show" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

NPR's Cokie Roberts hinted congressional Republicans were going to resort to extreme tactics regarding the debt ceiling on Monday's Morning Edition. Roberts noted the "rough votes" on the horizon in Congress, specifying the "debt ceiling that has to be increased, where Republicans have promised Armageddon." Host Renee Montagne brought on the journalist to talk mainly about the recent…

A cocky Chris Matthews on Monday dismissed the possible 2012 Republican presidential nominees as a "dog pound" and a "pig pen." The Hardball host briefly mentioned candidates such as Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty, but focused mostly on Donald Trump and lesser known individuals like Herman Cain. Talking to Republican strategist John Feehery and former Hillary Clinton aide Mark Penn, Matthews…

Does the New York Times fact-check its editorial pages? A slew of recent errors in Times opinion pieces suggest it does not - or, if it does, that it needs to do a better job. The most recent bout of falsehoods was, perhaps unsurprisingly, directed at the much-maligned owners of Koch Industries, Charles and David Koch. In a Sunday, April 3 op-ed in the Times, David Callahan, a senior fellow…

Clearly annoyed with conservative moves to cut the federal budget and, I suppose, with the success of conservative voters and the gun rights lobby, USA Today religion writer Cathy Lynn Grossman penned an odd entry entitled "Budget battles: Granny, get your gun," excerpted in full below:

Just hours before a last-minute deal was struck between Republicans and Democrats to prevent a government shutdown, CNN's Eliot Spitzer did some politicking of his own on Friday's "In the Arena." The former Democrat governor of New York interviewed the wife of an army private and delved into the family's medical and financial information – a rather awkward spectacle – all to make the case…

New York Times budget reporter Jackie Calmes’s lead story Monday showcased Obama as (finally) coming off the sidelines to engage in the debate over the future of U.S. finances with a Wednesday speech: “Obama To Call For Broad Plan To Rescue Debt – A Challenge To G.O.P. – Proposal Said to Include Some Tax Increases and Military Cuts.” Examine Calmes’s word choice: While she portrays Republican…

If Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite actually believed in Hell, she'd probably preach that Tea Partiers were headed there unless they repented and backed higher taxes and more government spending. The liberal seminary professor and Washington Post/Newsweek "On Faith" contributor last Wednesday lashed out at the "fundamentalism" of Tea Party calls for fiscal restraint, insisting that conservative…